Dolly Parton says family “whipped” her for dressing like the “town tramp”

Dolly Parton has said for years that she patterned her signature look on the “town tramp” she admired as a little girl growing up in Tennessee. She’s even gone so far as to say if she’d been born a boy, she would have “been a drag queen because I love all the ­flamboyant stuff.”

But in a new interview, the Jolene singer and long-time LGBTQ+ ally revealed the price she paid for her over-the-top sense of style.

Related: School district punishes teacher for revealing ban on Miley Cyrus & Dolly Parton’s “Rainbowland”

“Now Waukesha is a national laughingstock, and the blame for that falls squarely to the feet of the district’s leadership,” a supportive group said.

“She was flamboyant,” Parton told The Guardian of the unnamed woman who inspired her as a kid.“She had bright red lipstick, long red fingernails. She had high-heeled shoes, little floating plastic goldfish in the heels of them, short skirts, low-cut tops, and I just thought she was beautiful. When people would say, ‘She ain’t nothing but trash,’ I would always say, ‘Well, that’s what I’m gonna be when I grow up.’”

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According to The Guardian, Parton’s preacher grandfather and sharecropper dad didn’t approve of her taste in clothing, but that didn’t dissuade her. “I was willing to pay for it,” she said. “I’m very sensitive, I didn’t like being disciplined – it hurt my feelings so bad to be scolded or whipped or whatever. But sometimes there’s just that part of you that’s willing, if you want something bad enough, to go for it.”

“I’ve always been true to myself,” she explained. “That was what my mama always used to say: to thine own self be true. I put a lot of stock in that. Everything I do, whether it’s my personality, how I conduct myself and business, or whatever, if I do it my way, according to what I understand and believe, there’s a strength in that. You can think, ‘I can stand by this, I can live by this.’”

Her commitment to big hair and form-fitting bejeweled attire — not to mention her profound talent as a singer-songwriter, all-around entertainer, and businesswoman — paid off. More than five decades into her career, she remains one of America’s most beloved entertainers. And her signature style is getting the spotlight in her new book, Behind the Seams: My Life in Rhinestones, out next week ahead of her highly anticipated first rock ‘n’ roll album, Rockstar.

“My look came from a very serious place,” Parton told The Guardian. “That’s how I thought I looked best. Sometimes that’s worked for me, sometimes it can work against you. It took me probably years longer to be taken serious, but I wasn’t willing to change it, and I figured if I had the talent, it’d show up sooner or later.”