Dolly Parton has worn wigs for the vast majority of her career. Her towering hairdos defy gravity and prove how strong a neck Parton has. She wears wigs to achieve a shade of blonde that would damage her real hair. She also just likes the way they look. According to Parton’s longtime collaborator, Porter Wagoner, she hated going without a wig. When he knocked one off her head, he said she burst into tears.
Porter Wagoner said Dolly Parton cried when he knocked her wig off her head
Wagoner said that despite her outward confidence, he found Parton to be very insecure. He believed this was why she wore wigs.
“I soon found out that she was actually an insecure person — in the way she looked, in the way she was brought up, in every direction,” he said, per the book Smart Blonde by Stephen Miller. “Believe it or not, Dolly never used to think she was a beautiful woman, though of course she was. I feel sure that’s a main reason she wears the big hair-dos.”
He recalled a time when he accidentally knocked one of her wigs off her head.
“I just accidentally knocked Dolly’s wig off,” he said. “Her hair was matted down real tight to her head, and she did look pretty bad.”
Wagoner said Parton appeared to feel devastated by the situation. She began to cry.
“Well, that just damn near killed her,” he said. “It was just such a terrible, terrible thing; she cried about it. And of course, I felt awful because I didn’t mean to knock her wig off. But I learned then how sensitive she was.”
Dolly Parton shared why she wears wigs
Parton said she began wearing wigs because frequently dyeing her natural hair damaged it.
“Having the bleach and all of that, it just broke off,” Parton said on Hallmark’s Home & Family, adding, “I thought, ‘Why am I going through all that? Why not just wear wigs?’ That way I never have a bad hair day. I have a big hair day, but not a bad hair day.”
Wigs also allow her to wear her hair in dramatic, towering styles that would not be possible with her natural hair.
“I always wore my hair all teased up,” she wrote in the book Dolly Parton, Songteller: My Life in Lyrics. “Whenever that style started, I was the first to get my hair all poofy. Then as soon as I could buy those hairpieces and wigs, I wanted them. For one thing, they were so handy. Plus, my hair would never do exactly what I wanted it to do. So the wigs became kind of my trademark.”
This was far from the duo’s worst moment
While Wagoner making Parton cry wasn’t a great moment in their relationship, it was far from the worst. They fought often. Parton thanked Wagoner for all he’d done for her, but she said it wasn’t always easy to work with him.
“I think of Porter as one of the most important angels in my life, even with all of his demons,” she wrote in the book Dolly: My Life and Other Unfinished Business. “I have enough of my own demons to wrestle with, as we all do. We certainly were not shy about turning our demons loose on each other at any given moment. It was not uncommon for us to argue and holler loud enough to be heard a block away, or at the back of the bus.”
Parton said they had to push through “greed, spite, possessiveness, jealousy, fear — even hate” in order to work together.
