Have you ever wondered what Dolly Parton’s natural hair color is? Parton may have spent the last five glorious decades in the spotlight, but several aspects of the country singer-songwriter’s life are still somewhat shrouded in mystery. Her tattoos (which say perpetually hidden), for instance, have long been the subject of one of the biggest pop culture conspiracies. Her larger-than-life wig collection, for two, is another staple in Parton’s beauty routine, and it has covered the superstar’s real hair for the majority of her public life. If you can’t picture her without her signature platinum-blond hair color, you wouldn’t be alone. Therein lies the mystery of Parton’s real hair.
Despite what many might believe, Parton is in fact a natural blond, although her real hair color is closer to a sandy shade. On Oct. 24, Britney Spears dropped her highly anticipated memoir, “The Woman in Me,” which playfully featured an iconic quote from Parton: “I’m not offended by all the dumb blonde jokes because I know I’m not dumb. And I also know that I’m not blond.” In a similar fashion, Parton gave fans a rare peak at her natural hair in her own 2020 memoir, “Dolly Parton, Songteller: My Life in Lyrics.”
Throughout her book, Parton included a bunch of throwback pictures from throughout her life, a few of which showed her with sandy-blond hair. She also shared a black-and-white picture on her Instagram showing the singer in a recording booth with her natural color. Though it’s hard to pinpoint the actual hair hue, you can see it swept loosely in a side parting, with her blond ends distinctly highlighted in the monochrome photograph.
The singer told the WSJ Magazine in 2021 that her natural hair is very similar to her wigs and falls a little past her shoulder. “That way, I can just pull it up with a little scrunchie,” she said, then explained why she swapped her natural hair for a more bleached version. “I was born blond and couldn’t wait to get it blonder. I started buying peroxide as soon as I could afford it! I just am a blonde. That’s just my nature. It’s me.” Parton also touched on this subject in her 2012 chat with Interview Magazine: “I’d already bleached my hair and got in big trouble. I have blond hair, but it just wasn’t radiant, it’s sandy blond. It wasn’t yellow and white and bright.”
She’s also previously opened up about what sparked her fondness for wigs. “I always wore my hair all teased up,” she wrote in her 2020 book. “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.”
In another 2021 interview with Vogue, Parton shared that she initially switched to her now-iconic wigs as a preventative measure to avoid hair breakage due to over-styling. “I started wearing wigs because I quickly realized that bleaching and teasing my hair every day would cause breakage and not look good,” she said. There was, of course, another upside: saying goodbye to the ever-imminent bad hair days. “It was handy to have several looks that I could just choose from and never have a bad hair day.”
So, there you have it. Parton is a natural blond, even though she doesn’t always prefer wearing her hair au naturel and often opts for platinum wigs. We love a relatable queen. Check out Parton’s natural hair color in another throwback picture shared by the star below.
Ina Bansal is a contributor at PS, where she writes for the Beauty vertical.
