"If I hadn’t been a girl, I would’ve definitely been a drag queen!" says Dolly Parton.
The glamorous country star is well known for her elaborate bouffant wigs and dramatic make up, in fact she once even entered a Dolly Parton lookalike contest for drag queens - and lost.
"They had a bunch of Chers and Dollys that year, so I just over-exaggerated - made my beauty mark bigger, the eyes bigger, the hair bigger, everything," she told ABC.
"All these beautiful drag queens had worked for weeks and months getting their clothes. So I just got in the line and I just walked across… but I got the least applause."
Raised in poverty in the Smoky Mountains, Dolly spent her younger years yearning for a hairpiece.
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And when the money started rolling in after she signed her first record deal in Nashville, Dolly could have as many of them as she wanted.
In her autobiography, Songteller: My Life in Lyrics, she wrote: "I always wore my hair all teased up. 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."
Explaining her very practical reason for wearing a wig rather than showing off her own hair, she continued: "For one thing they were so handy.
"Plus my hair would never do exactly what I wanted it to. So the wigs became kind of my trademark."
Dolly's wigs even have their own staff - the star employs a dedicated stylist who brushes and maintains the creations.
In the book, Dolly, who turns 76 on Wednesday, also gave fans a rare look at her stunning natural hair.
In a black and white picture taken around 1965 after she signed to Monument Records, a young Dolly can be seen singing into the microphone with her mid-length tresses swept back.
"In case you're wondering, yes, that's my real hair," she captioned it.
While Dolly has proclaimed she isn't dumb or blonde as a hilarious response to being called a "dumb blonde", her natural locks are certainly very fair.
Her gravity-defying figure has had some help from plastic surgeons, something Dolly happily admits, but what her fans might not know is her body is also decorated with tattoos which she tends to keep hidden under her clothes.
And Ab Fab star Jennifer Saunders once let slip that she'd seen Dolly's 'beautiful' but mysterious inkings over dinner is Los Angeles.
"It was 9.30 in the evening, which meant that the restaurant was empty, because that's what happens in LA, everyone goes home, no one stays out drinking late," Jennifer recalled.
"And so the restaurant was empty and she just opened her jacket and showed us, can I say, the most beautiful tattoos."
And Dolly recently confirmed that she does indeed have a secret pretty pastel collection which she uses to hide her scars.
Sure enough - a photo taken in 2012 reveals a glimpse of one inking, which looks like a bunch of pink flowers on her chest between her breasts.
Dolly told W Magazine her body art includes butterflies, bows, flowers, ribbons and a beehive.
"Butterflies don’t sting, they don’t bite, and they are so beautiful, and I just kind of related to them with my own personality," she said.
"I claimed them as my little symbol."
She continued: "Most of my tattoos came because I’m very fair and I have a tendency to scar when I get any kind of cut.
"I’ve had surgeries for different things, and if the scars didn’t heal properly, I just gotta put tattoos to take the sting out."
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