The ‘trashy’ Dolly Parton joke that she said would probably wind up on her tombstone

Dolly Parton never got too big for her britches — but of all her self-deprecating “Dollyisms” there was one that she repeated so many times, she figured it might go on her tombstone.

“It costs a lot of money to look this cheap,” Parton, who died at 80 on Wednesday, said while starring in the 1982 movie, “The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas.”

The famous phrase became a Parton motto, and she told Vanity Fair in 2008 that that phrase would probably make it onto her epitaph, in addition to making “several requisite cracks about her ample bust size.”

Parton said the iconic quote while starring in “The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas.” ©Universal/courtesy Everett / Ev

Her humor about her signature bottle-blonde bombshell look was born from Parton’s early days growing up in rural Sevier County, Tennessee – and what she called a “country girl’s idea of glamor,” she explained in a 2006 interview.

“Well, cheap lookin’, flashy lookin’,” Parton said about her style, before diving into a story about her hometown of Locust Ridge.

“I kind of patterned myself after what they called the town tramp in my hometown, when I was little,” she told CBS “The Early Show” anchor Julie Chen in 2006.

“There was this woman that was very much a loose woman, but I didn’t know what that meant and I just told her how beautiful she was, ’cause she had this beautiful yellow hair.

Dolly Parton’s Pet Gala on January 30, 2024, in Nashville. CBS via Getty Images

“She left a big impression on me, and I would talk about how beautiful she was and different ones would say, ‘Oh, she’s just trash.’ And I thought, ‘That’s what I want to be when I grow up. I’m gonna be trash!’ And that is how I look,” Parton continued.

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Despite what critics said, Parton never felt ashamed of her “trashy” persona throughout her life, she said during an appearance on the WorkLife Podcast with Adam Grant in April 2022.

“Everybody said, ‘She’s trash.’ And in my little girl mind, I thought, ‘Well, that’s what I’m going to be when I grow up.’ It was really like a look I was after. I wasn’t a natural beauty. So, I just like to look the way I look. I’m so outgoing inside in my personality, that I need the way I look to match all of that,” she said.

Another fan-favorite phrase from the musical icon included, “It’s hard to be a diamond in a rhinestone world.”