Straight Shooter Dolly Parton Says She Refuses to Text Because “I Don’t Want to Have to Answer”

As we saw this weekend, Dolly Parton has bigger fish to fry than responding to so and so’s text message, okay? Just in case you missed it, Parton dazzled (and went viral) when she performed at halftime of the Dallas Cowboys’ matchup against the Washington Chargers on Thanksgiving—where she dressed up as a Dallas Cowboys cheerleader in a plunging crop top and white denim shorts. “Dolly Parton is 77 and hotter than me,” a social media user tweeted, per Page Six, while another called the performer a “national treasure.” Former Cowboys quarterback Tony Romo also added to the chorus of praises, saying that she looked “amazing.” (And she did.)

Okay, but back to Parton’s disdain for texting: during an appearance on The Drew Barrymore Show yesterday, Parton told Barrymore “I’m a low-tech girl in a high-tech world. I don’t want to talk to everybody that wants to talk to me. I don’t text ‘cause I don’t want to have to answer.” Now that’s sound logic if we’ve ever heard it.

Now, Parton clarified, “If somebody calls me, I’ll answer it if I want to talk to ‘em or I’ll call ‘em back when I can. Otherwise, I’ve got too much to think about than to clutter my mind up with everything else.”

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She further elaborated that she doesn’t text not because she isn’t capable of it—as Parton has certainly shown, she can do anything—but dang it, she just doesn’t want to. “I’m certainly not a stupid person,” she said. “I could learn it if I wanted to, but I’d rather just have my fax machine [and] 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.”

Even Parton’s goddaughter Miley Cyrus said in a May 2022 interview that she can’t reach her via text: “Every time I coordinate and kind of communicate with Dolly, it’s still through fax,” Cyrus said during an appearance on Late Night with Seth Meyers. She also added that Parton is “rarely on the phone,” telling Meyers “Well, we do use the phone, but she does a fax, and then someone scans the fax, and then they put it into a text message, and then that gets sent to me. And it’s always signed.”

Rachel Burchfield is a writer, editor, and podcaster whose primary interests are fashion and beauty, society and culture, and, most especially, the British Royal Family and other royal families around the world. She serves as Marie Claire’s Senior Celebrity and Royals Editor and has also contributed to publications like Allure, Cosmopolitan, Elle, Glamour, Harper’s Bazaar, InStyle, People, Vanity Fair, Vogue, and W, among others. Before taking on her current role with Marie Claire, Rachel served as its Weekend Editor and later Royals Editor. She is the cohost of Podcast Royal, a show that was named a top five royal podcast by The New York Times. A voracious reader and lover of books, Rachel also hosts I’d Rather Be Reading, which spotlights the best current nonfiction books hitting the market and interviews the authors of them. Rachel frequently appears as a media commentator, and she or her work has appeared on outlets like NBC’s Today Show, ABC’s Good Morning America, CNN, and more.