When Heidi Montag was getting torn apart for having about 10 procedures in one day at 23, Dolly Parton said she probably would have done the same thing at that age. Sixteen years later, Montag says it’s still one of the kindest things anyone famous said about it.
Heidi Montag posted her tribute on X in the early hours of Friday, Aug. 29, four days after Parton died at 80. She was pointing back to March 2010, when the press was still calling her “sad” and “confused” over the roughly 10 cosmetic procedures she’d had in a single day the previous November.
Montag’s full post:
“When I was at one of the hardest and most criticized moment of my life after my plastic surgery, Dolly was one of the only people in the industry who didn’t take the opportunity to drag me down. Speaking about Heidi, Dolly said: ‘I had probably done the same thing if I was her age and could afford it, if I thought I needed it.’ Thank you Dolly. I remember when she came to my small town when I was seven years old, ate at my family restaurant, sang happy birthday to my Grammy, and it changed my life. She has always been an inspiration to me. Such a blessing from afar. God bless you thank you Lord for this angel on earth.”
Parton had given the line to Access Hollywood at the time, and she’d talked openly about her own surgeries for decades, which is why the comment never read as a scold. Montag’s family ran The Timberline, a restaurant in Crested Butte, from 1989 until it closed in 2010, and she’d have turned 7 in September 1993.
Montag has since said she doesn’t regret enhancement itself, only doing that much that young: “I was beautiful before and it was fine. And I didn’t need that.”
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