Dolly Parton Doesn't Know How to Text and Has No Interest in Learning: 'I Don't Want to Have to Answer'
Music icon Dolly Parton has a cell phone — but she has no desire in using it to send text messages.
During her Monday, November 27, appearance on Drew Barrymore's eponymous talk show, the singer explained her reasoning for refusing to communicate via written messages.
"I’m a low-tech girl in a high-tech world. I surround myself with all these people in that high-tech world, but I don’t want to talk to everybody that wants to talk to me," shared the blonde beauty, 77. "I don’t text because I don’t want to have to answer."
"If somebody calls me, I’ll answer it if I want to talk to them or I’ll call them back when I can," Parton continued. "Otherwise, I’ve got too much to think about than to clutter my mind up with everything else."
“I’m certainly not a stupid person," the "9 to 5" crooner insisted. "I could learn it if I wanted to, but I’d rather just have my fax machine, call in my creative stuff to my crew. And I’ve got the best crew in the world and I surround myself with great people, but I just don’t have time to just sit with my face in the phone all day."
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The country star has always been set in her ways, revealing that at the start of her career, she refused to listen to pal Chet Atkins when he suggested she take a more low-key approach when it came to her appearance.
"He said, ‘Dolly, I really don’t believe that people are going to take you serious as a singer and songwriter unless you tone down your look. You’re a right pretty girl. You don’t need all that,'" she recalled. "And I said, ‘Well, okay, I’ll take that to heart, Mr. Atkins. Thank you for your advice.’ And of course, I just got worse with it. And years later, after I became a star, he sidled up beside me and said, ‘Now, ain’t you glad you listened to my good advice?’"
When asked how she'd reply to someone who told her the same thing today, she quipped, "I'd say, 'Go to h---. I ain't doing it."
"My true belief with most things, you’ve got to really find out who you are, what makes you happy, what you’re comfortable in, and if you feel like you look your best, according to your rules, then you are going to do your best," the Grammy winner explained. "I really believe that. And I think everybody has their own little things they love. To me, that is what fashion is."
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Parton proved she's stayed true to her authentic self when she came out in a Dallas Cowboys cheerleader outfit to perform for the Thanksgiving Halftime show this year.
While some thought the look was too much, stars like Whoopi Goldberg quickly came to her defense.
"Some critics told her to act her age. Bite me!" Goldberg stated on The View. "Everybody that participated in [the hate], you should be ashamed of yourself."