If Dolly Parton wants to take part in a Playboy photo shoot, she’s not going to let a little thing like the magazine no longer being in print get in her way.
The country music legend decided to make her own cover, recreating one she did for the publication back in 1978, to surprise her husband Carl Dean for his 79th birthday on Tuesday.
Donning an iconic Playboy bunny suit with the famous ears, Parton posted a video sharing her surprise on social media.
Image: Dolly Parton recreated her 1978 Playboy cover to surprise her husband Carl Dean for his 79th birthday. Pic: @DollyParton
The 75-year-old said her husband of more than 50 years had always been fond of her cover and she had been hoping to recreate the look officially this year to celebrate her own landmark birthday. However, the famous men’s magazine stopped its print edition in March 2020.
So, Parton did the next best thing and created a homemade version.
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“Remember some time back I said I was going to pose on Playboy magazine when I’m 75?” the singer said in her video. “Well, I’m 75 and they don’t have a magazine anymore, but my husband always loved the original cover of Playboy.
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“So I was trying to think of something to do to make him happy. He still thinks I’m a hot chick after 57 years and I’m not going to try to talk him out of that.”
Parton sat for a photoshoot and had a new cover made to go alongside the original.
Comparing the two, she said with a wink: “I was kind of a little butterball in that one, well I’m string cheese now. But he’ll probably think I’m cream cheese – I hope!”
The star also included a picture of her surprising Dean in the video, but only showed the back of his head – a small nod to their famously private marriage.
Image: Dolly Parton surprised her husband Carl Dean with a recreated Playboy cover. Pic: @DollyParton
“It’s always #HotGirlSummer for my husband, Carl,” she captioned the post. “Happy birthday my love!”
Established by the late Hugh Hefner in 1953, Playboy’s bowtie-wearing bunny mascot became one of the most recognisable American brands in history.
The first issue of the magazine in 1953 featured nude photographs of Marilyn Monroe and sold more than 50,000 copies.
Parton has recreated her cover following a year in which she has also been praised for “curing coronavirus” after donating $1m (£814,000) to the Vanderbilt University Medical Center – a partner of the US company Moderna that developed one of the COVID-19 vaccines.
She even reworked her famous hit Jolene “to fit the occasion” when she got her own jab, singing: “Vaccine, vaccine, vaccine, vaccine – I’m begging of you, please don’t hesitate. Vaccine, vaccine, vaccine, vaccine – because once you’re dead, then that’s a bit too late.”
Playboy bunny, vaccine funder and a country superstar – is there nothing Dolly Parton can’t do?
On the junction of the Las Vegas strip where Tupac Shakur was shot dead in September 1996, only a graffiti-covered lamp post with some scrawls of “RIP Pac” and “Tupac Shakur, I love you,” hint at what unfolded here.
Tupac was rap music’s brightest star when he was shot four times at point-blank range while being driven along one of the city’s busiest streets. He died a week later.
His fame has only increased in the years since and his death is the subject of dozens of books, films and songs.
Until this week, many people had given up believing that police would crack one of America’s great unsolved crimes. But today, in a courtroom just a few miles from where he was killed and 27 years later, a man will enter a plea, charged with Tupac’s murder.
Image: Tupac during an interview in 1991. Pic: AP
It is a moment Tupac’s family feared they would never see. His brother, Mopreme Shakur, told Sky News: “I was shocked, surprised, and taken aback because it’s been so long.
“We haven’t heard anything in 27 years. My daughter is 27 years old, so any accountability is good at this point.”
The man arrested is Duane Davis, better known in rap circles by his street name Keefe D.
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He has long been known to investigators as one of four suspects identified early in the investigation. He isn’t the accused gunman but is described as the group’s ringleader by authorities.
In Nevada you can be charged with a crime, including murder, if you help someone commit the crime.
‘How far are they going to go?’
Mopreme believes others need to be held criminally accountable for his brother’s murder. “It would be a shame after all this time for them not to do this properly,” he says, “meaning that they look at all the connections to it and get the total justice that we want.
“There’s doubt in their sincerity. How far are they going to go? Are they going to go all the way and get all the accomplices? “
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Tupac suspect recalls night rapper died
Duane Davis is accused of being the “shot caller” by authorities and is alleged to have handed the gun used to kill Tupac to the shooter. As early as 1998, Davis bragged about being at the scene of the crime and wrote a memoir in which he stated he was in the car from where the bullets were fired.
Mopreme says he believes Tupac’s murder would not have gone unsolved for so long if he had been white. “Pac was a young black male,” he says, “and we have challenges in this country when it comes to equal justice.
“That’s just the nature of the beast, it’s just the nature of the beast in America. I’m realistic about that.”
David Beckham has insisted he was not upset by the criticism he received over his decision to accept millions of pounds from Qatar to serve as a football ambassador around last year’s World Cup, despite its stance on LGBTQ+ rights.
Jamie Lee Curtis has praised Pamela Anderson for showing up to Paris Fashion Week with no makeup on, crediting her with kicking off a “natural beauty revolution”.
Curtis wrote: “THE NATURAL BEAUTY REVOLUTION HAS OFFICIALLY BEGUN!
“Pamela Anderson in the middle of fashion week with so many pressures and postures, and and and, this woman showed up and claimed her seat at the table with nothing on her face.
“I am so impressed and floored by this act of courage and rebellion.”
Actress Selma Blair commented “Love this. Beautiful self-assuredness,” while comedian Chelsea Handler wrote, “That’s pretty iconic”.
Michelle Visage added, “And she was GLOWING”.
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The images of Anderson were taken on Thursday at the Isabel Marant Womenswear Spring/Summer 2024 show at Place Colette during Paris Fashion Week.
She also attended the Victoria Beckham show the following day.
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Anderson, 56, who in her youth embraced cosmetic enhancements to the extreme, has since adopted a more natural look.
She told Elle last year that started going makeup-free after her makeup artist Alexis Vogel sadly died from breast cancer.
Anderson said: “She was the best. And since then, I just felt, without Alexis, it’s just better for me not to wear makeup.”
Calling her low-maintenance approach “freeing, and fun, and a little rebellious,” she went on to joke about “the effects of time, which come to us all”.
She said: “I think we all start looking a little funny when we get older. And I’m kind of laughing at myself when I look at the mirror. I go: ‘Wow, this is really…what’s happening to me?’ It’s a journey’,” she said. “I feel rooted for. I feel good. I’m in a good place.”
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Meanwhile Curtis has long been a fan of growing old gracefully.
During a conversation with Maria Shriver for the Radically Reframing Ageing Summit in March 2022, she said: “I am an advocate now for natural beauty because I do feel that there has been a genocide on natural beauty.
“This word ‘anti-ageing’ has to be struck, because what the f*** is ‘anti-ageing?’ I am pro-ageing. I want to age with intelligence and grace and dignity and verve and energy. I don’t want to hide from it.”