Dolly Parton Finally Addresses Those Tattoo Rumors, Calling Her Ink “Tasteful”
Dolly Parton has finally shed light on those tattoo rumors. For years, fans have speculated that her signature long sleeves (and gloves) are more than a fashion statement, and The Queen of Country recently admitted to People that she does, in fact, have multiple tattoos. That said, she assures they are as classy as the southern belle herself.
“I do have some tattoos, that’s true,” she shared. “But they’re tasteful. I’m not a tattoo girl.” Parton said her ink is minimal, and she certainly doesn’t have sleeves.
“My tattoos are pretty, they’re artful and they usually started out to cover some scar, not to make a big statement,” she said, explaining why she got them in the first place. “Ribbons and bows and butterflies are the things that I have. I was very sick for a while and I had to wear a feeding tube. It left a little indention in my side and I didn’t like it because I’m so fair that scars turn purple on me.”
“I like to make positives out of negatives,” Parton shared with People. “I had a little beehive tattooed over it—a little yellow-and-brown beehive with a tiny little bee on top of the hive. The mouth of it is that little sinkhole.”
This isn’t the first time Parton opened up about her ink. In 1999, Jay Leno was the first to publicly ask Parton about her tattoos when she was a guest on his late night show. Then, she admitted to having an angel and a butterfly.
In 2016, the country star told Larry King more about the keloid scarring that never fully fades on her fair skin. Keloids are raised scars that often result from surgery or injury. According to the American Academy of Dermatology, they tend to grow much larger than the wound that caused them.
“They’re not tattoos that are for big statements,” she told King. She said she started having little pastel “things” done and that she has “splattered them here and there.” But she assured him that she “wouldn’t be a biker chick or anything.”
Parton also told Good Morning America’s Robin Roberts for the ABC News special, Dolly Parton: Here She Comes Again!, that she “can never get rid of the purple look” of her scarring. “So I thought, ‘Well, I’m going to kind of decorate these with some flowers or little butterflies or whatever.’”
It should come as no surprise that the legendary artist chose to decorate her body with butterflies. The often colorful, winged insect represents her theme park, Dollywood, and she wrote one of her early hits about them.
“They tell stories about me getting lost in the woods, and getting in trouble chasing butterflies,” she said. “I wrote a song called ‘Love Is Like a Butterfly,’ and it became a big hit in my early years.”
Although she admitted to having flowers, butterflies, bees, and angels tatted on her skin, she revealed that her longtime husband Carl Dean did not make the cut. “He’s tattooed on my heart,” Parton told People. “Who knows, I may get some more later. I may just have to get covered with tattoos just so everybody could be right!”
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