Dolly Parton On If She’s More Likely to Pick up a Playboy Or a Playgirl

When Dolly Parton did her first Playboy Magazine cover in 1978, it was a pivotal point in her career. She had just left The Porter Wagoner Show and was setting out on her own. She was breaking the mold for female country singers at the time. Three years later, she was interviewed by Playgirl. But the “Light of A Clear Blue Morning” singer was nervous to appear in the magazine because she didn’t want her country fans to think Hollywood had turned her scandalous. She ended up doing the interview anyway, where she was asked, on any given day, if she was handed a Playboy and a Playgirl, “which one would you thumb through first?” Her answer was “Playboy.” Here’s why.

Why Dolly Parton preferred to look at Playboys over Playgirls

“If someone handed you a copy of Playgirl and Playboy, which would you thumb through first?” asked her interviewer.

“Well, to be honest—I don’t mean it to sound strange, as if I get off on women—but Playboy, I think,” she responded, as recorded in the book Dolly on Dolly. “I enjoy the stuff that’s in it. . . I get embarrassed, too, really. I mean, I like naked bodies and all that. I don’t have any hang-ups about it, but somehow it embarrasses me more when I see a naked man in pictures, totally naked, than when I see naked women.”

The Queen of Country was also asked if she felt Playboy and Playgirl exploit the women and men they feature. “Not any more than they want to be exploited,” said Parton.

Dolly Parton used to look at Playboys with her girlfriends for a laugh

For the “Jolene” singer, looking at a Playboy was something she did for fun with her friends. It wasn’t something she did by herself.

“I know a lot of girls who read Playgirl, and they look at it mostly in a joking manner, like, ‘Hey, look at this one’ or, ‘Hey, did you see that one?'” she said. “Although the men are beautiful, it’s hard for me to take it seriously. It seems natural for women to pose and be pretty, and it just seems a bit clumsy for a man to strike so-called sexy poses. I love men, I love skin, but I can’t think of it as serious. Usually, when I look at nude pictures it’s with a whole crowd of girls and there’s so much jokin’ and laughin’ going on that you don’t really see the person. You just see an it.”

The ‘9 to 5’ singer was trying to be mindful of her image

While Parton didn’t “have any hang-ups” about appearing in Playboy or Playgirl herself, she was worried about what her fans would think. And the last thing she wanted her peers back in Nashville to think was that Hollywood had changed her.

“I don’t want to get on the cover of too many sex-oriented things, although I love that stuff myself,” she said. “I just don’t want to do ’em to a point where it looks like, here I am in Hollywood, I start wearin’ low-neck clothes, I start doing Whorehouse, start doin’ Playgirl and Playboy, and then my image changes. It means something to me, what my family and my people think and feel. I’m still the same person I was before I ever got to Hollywood.”