Dolly Parton caused quite the stir back in Nov. 2023 when she performed on the halftime stage at the Cowboys vs. Commanders game, and it turns out her husband, Carl, was one of her haters.
The then-77-year-old (now 78) rocked an itty-bitty iteration of the Cowboys cheerleader uniform, clad in a mini pair of white shorts, a blue, long-sleeved bra top, and a matching white vest and belt with blue stars on them. She wore a skin-toned, bedazzled bodysuit underneath the look, drawing the ire of countless folks who declared the “Jolene” songstress was too old to be wearing such an outfit.
Her sister, Christie Brinkley, and even Whoopie Goldberg came to her defense against those telling her to dress her age, but now, Parton is opening up about her husband’s response to the look, which wasn’t entirely positive.
In a new interview with Page Six, she recalled, “He did say something like, ‘What? Is it, a little short, don’t you think?’”
It was certainly a kinder way to address his concerns than most of her other critics, but she wasn’t backing down.
As Parton pointed out to him at the time, the shorts weren’t “as short as theirs,” referring, of course, to the cheerleaders’ official uniforms—meaning she was not the most scandalous thing on the field that night.
The response was much more than she was expecting from the bit, which she thought would just be “a cool little thing to do” for the occasion.
“I thought most people would excuse me if it didn’t turn out,” she told the publication. “I thought, they’re just like us, some older woman making a bad mistake.”
Unfortunately, some people don’t know how to abide by the good old-fashioned saying: “If you have nothing nice to say, say nothing at all.”