Dolly Parton shares why she didn’t let Elvis record hit song
Country music star Dolly Parton wowed onlookers at an NFL game in Texas last week with her bedazzled version of the Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders uniform, flaunting her toned physique and ageless looks.
However, the 77-year-old hasn’t had the easiest of paths as she struggled with a number of health issues throughout most of her decades-long career in the public eye.
In the 2017 book Dolly on Dolly: Interviews and Encounters with Dolly Parton, the Jolene hitmaker revealed her health began to deteriorate in the early 1980s and she admitted much of it was due to her intense work ethic and lacking self care.
She shared in the book that she first started falling ill at the age of 35 in 1981, saying that until then she had been “getting away with murder”.
The Rock and Roll Hall of Famer explained according to The Mirror: “I wasn’t watching what I ate, I wasn’t conscious of nutrition, wasn’t taking care of myself.
“I was working hard, and underneath I was a pile of personal and emotional problems. All at once I fell apart.”
Dolly’s health struggles started with stomach and “femae” problems and quickly progressed after her sensational track 9 to 5 hit the charts.
At the same time, the musician was making her Hollywood debut in The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas in the 1982.
Two intense years later and Dolly’s body couldn’t take it anymore as the singer collapsed on stage during a concert in Indianapois after a doctor advised her not to perform.
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Shortly after the public tumble, Dolly was diagnosed with endometriosis, which sees tissue similar to the lining of the womb growing elsewhere in the body and causes extreme pain and internal bleeding in some cases.
Trying to balance her health and career, the Grammy award winner made the difficult decision to have a partial hysterectomy at the age of 36 which meant she wouldn’t be able to have children naturally.
The operation sent Dolly spiralling as she wrote in her book: “Suddenly I was a middle-aged woman. I went through a dark time.”
The Coat of Many Colours singer fell into a deep depression, leading her to drink too much alcohol and overeat as she confessed that at one point she would eat three pizzas and still be craving McDonalds.
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This sparked a cycle of unhealthy eating that would take Dolly years to escape, as she recalled in her book: “On top of being medicated, Dietin’ Dolly would go on liquid protein, Scarsdale, Atkins, the water diet.
“Then I’d binge, diet, gain, start all over again. Eventually, my system wouldn’t work anymore.
“My body couldn’t hold up under that strain.”
Now, having come out on the other side of her “dark time”, the singer is far more mindful of caring for herself and her nutrition, telling Marie Claire more recently: “Now, I can’t eat like that all the time, but I enjoy eating it when I do.”
* An AI tool was used to add an extra layer to the editing process for this story.
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