Dolly Parton Finally Reveals the Truth Behind Rumors About Her Tattoos

What would Dolly do? Well, she wouldn’t get a full sleeve, so it seems.

Dolly Parton is finally letting fans in on her secret tattoos. Her affinity for long-sleeved tops and dresses sparked rumors that she’s actually hiding something under those sleeves. But in a new interview for W Magazine, Dolly revealed she isn’t fully tatted up.

“I have a few little tattoos here and there,” said the singer, who has previously revealed she has ink of ribbons, bows, beehives and butterflies. “I don’t have the real heavy, dark tattoos. Mine are all pastel. And I have more than one!”

As she’s mentioned in the past, Dolly decided to get tattoos due to scars from medical procedures, including when she had a feeding tube.

“Most of my tattoos came because I’m very fair and I have a tendency to scar when I get any kind of cut,” she explained to the magazine. “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.” (In 2015, she shut down rumors that she had stomach cancer while sharing that she had kidney stones removed.)

Two years later, Dolly told E! News that her tats are just “scattered here and there, where I need them, but they’re not the kind of thing to show on television usually,” teasing, “I can’t get naked, can I?”

As recently as last year, she told People that she doesn’t consider herself a “tattoo girl” and only gets symbols that are “tasteful.”

Dolly explained, “My tattoos are pretty, they’re artful and they usually started out to cover some scar, not to make a big statement… I like to make positives out of negatives.”

The country star, who recreated her iconic Playboy cover at age 75, also admitted she does not have a tattoo of husband Carl Dean. “No, he’s tattooed on my heart,” she joked.

Rumors about her ink spread in 2011 after Roseanne Barr randomly mentioned it during an interview. “Do you know who’s totally tattooed? I shouldn’t even tell this. Dolly Parton is totally tattooed,” she said. “She showed me. She’s got all these awesome tattoos all over her body. No black or blue lines. All pastel, gorgeous bows all over everything.”

See? Tasteful.