I don't know how she looked on Letterman, but I found this. In my opinion, it's sort of a case of damned if you do, damned if you don't. If a famous woman ages naturally, there are tons of comments about her looks a la "what happened!?" (and being, like, 50 myself, I can tell you, shit happens, and it's just wrong, wrong, wrong), and if she has plastic surgery, she continues getting accolades about how amazing she looks, until she passes that critical point.

Dolly's around 65, and has spent more time than most of you have been alive keeping up her appearance in order to not disappoint her fans. To me, that sounds like a lifetime of misery, but people with the star thing are not like me - they have that compulsion that urges them forward and into the public eye to begin with, and then the concentration and calculation and charisma to keep it all going on.

Women are most cruelly treated in this world, because so much more depends on their looks. I don't think we really have a female equivalent of a Johnny Cash, or Tom Jones (just in music), or so many other male entertainers who can make a comeback or just seamlessly continue on as an older star, so it's very difficult for me to condemn them for going over the top finally. They've spent their whole lives in service to a certain sort of image, and have been constantly rewarded as long as they stick with that. It's been the rare female star who can keep her celebrity while growing old gracefully.

or, tl/dr: if you saw her as she would naturally look, without all the make-up, wigs, plastic surgery, etc., like anyone's grandma, you (general you!) would not be pleased.

Dolly's often said, "It takes a lot of money to look this cheap" and so...I sort of think that for her, there was no other road. She's gonna try to keep looking like what she thinks "Dolly" should look like. I agree, it's looking weird, and also I think taz is right, there are few graceful options available to the mega-famous. Which, yeah, is really too bad.

General Yu will always love Dolly no matter what.

*Salutes General Yu*

Yea, what taz said. I don't think that Dolly could get away with looking like the female equivalent of Willie or Kristofferson.

There's a lady kind of like that in my office. She's in her 60s, and gets botox, lifts, and has "permanent makeup" (i.e., eyebrow, eyeliner, and lipliner tattoos). Isn't hesitant to tell us all about it. Personally, I think she looks pretty freaky. Her skin has that super thin, shiny look to it from being so stretched.

But it's totally true that there's no way to know what she'd look like without it and it's very likely people would whisper behind her back about getting old naturally too.

She's not in the public eye, but coworkers have seen pictures of her from her younger days and apparently she was quite beautiful. I can almost understand the pressure/compulsion to not let that beauty fade. It starts with a little work here and there and you get used to the unnatural way your face looks and before you know it everything's so obvious. To everyone else.

I've loved Dolly and her Dolly looks over the years -- this was the first time I felt a bit distracted by her appearance. She also seemed a bit tense and unhappy, maybe tired, which is unusual for her. Shrug. She talked about another album she cut with Smokey Mountain music -- I need to check it out, I loove her music, especially in recent years.

Info on the new album, "sold exclusively at Dollywood."

Yeah, she's been looking over-stretched, but she's still lovable. Coat of Many Colors was on the jukebox of my college hangout. No matter how much surgery she has, Dolly is really real.