Dolly Parton’s three passions are “God, music and sex”. As she writes in her 1994 memoir Dolly: My Life and Other Unfinished Business, “I would like to say that I have listed them in order of importance to me, but their pecking order is subject to change without warning.”
Today, she emerges as an unlikely feminist heroine, who understands the intersection of class and female experience better than most gender studies professors, who is beloved for her authenticity while simultaneously drawing attention to her faux femininity. “Don’t be fooled by my fake eyelashes because I’m not as fake as I look,” the self-proclaimed “Barbie from the backwoods” has said. Her fanbase includes drag queens and hardcore Republicans, but somehow she unites them and embodies a kind of inclusivity that every world leader could learn from.
I think it would be very difficult to say no to this small, 77-year-old woman who is adored by everyone. So it’s no surprise that Lizzo, Miley Cyrus, Elton John, Nikki Sixx, Steven Tyler, Joan Jett, Paul McCartney, Peter Frampton and Debbie Harry are just some of the people who appear on Parton’s new rock record Rockstar.
Parton is clearly one of the brightest minds in the business, and that’s before we get to her beautiful songwriting. She understood branding before we ever used the word. She fought tooth and nail, living off food scraps from hotel hallways to escape the controlling male managers and do things her way.
Her backstory of growing up in the hills of East Tennessee never really leaves her. Her mother married at the age of 15 and had 12 children. As they said at the time, she always had “one on her and one in her.” The family had nothing. Her father and mother beat her, as did her brother Coy Denver. But she was always strong-willed – in My life and Other Unfinished Business, Parton writes dryly that “mountain boys” like her brother would suppress their chauvinism after two or three divorces, after which she would take revenge and describe her approach. as an “Appalachian feminist guerrilla movement.” This is about the only time Parton ever uses the word feminism, although she will be asked about it again and again throughout her career.
At the age of 12, Parton became aware of her feminine power during her baptism. In her memoir, she describes her wet cotton dress hanging from her “headlights,” and the boys say Hallelujah. She feels horny in church. She thinks that God wouldn’t have given her these famous breasts if he didn’t want people to notice them. She loves sex and when she starts singing, she falls in love with the audience, just as they fall in love with her. She writes: “that’s the great thing about a sense of humor and sex drive, you can’t wait to share it with everyone.”
She makes her own makeup with the blackened ends of matchsticks on her eyebrows and eyelashes, and with berry juice to stain her lips. She bleaches her hair and makes it bigger, while wearing increasingly tight costumes. The Dolly image is born and it is both an expression of femininity and class, as well as a kind of armor. “I look like a woman, but I think like a man,” she writes.
The glare hides an incredible gift for songwriting; songs often about abandoned women, dying children and dire poverty. Those who underestimate her because of her nuclear bosom will get their comeuppance. When in New York a man who mistook her for a prostitute “began grabbing me in places I reserve for grabbers of my own choosing,” she pulls a gun and says, “Touch me again, son of a… .h and I’m going to drive you crazy.” You don’t argue with Dolly.
The late 1960s saw the rise of the Women’s Liberation movement. Parton may not make any public statements about it or identify with it, but she still writes songs about the double standards surrounding sex for women. Her 1968 hit Just Because I’m a Woman, for example, was based on the anger expressed by her husband Carl Dean, always gnomic and invisible, about her having had sex before their marriage at the age of 20. stations in the southern states of America, with the lyrics: “Now I know I’m not an angel/ If that’s what you thought you found/ I was just a victim of/ A man who let me down/ No , my faults are no worse than yours/ Just because I’m a woman.”
In fact, several of her songs deal with the double standards women face: both Bargain Store and The Eagle Flies focused on the realities of working-class women’s lives. Bargain Store contained the lyrics: “If you don’t mind all the merchandise being used / But with a little repair it could be as good as new / The bargain store is open, come on in”, and was thus rightly banned. Parton wasn’t bothered by it. “I’ve written a lot of songs that people wouldn’t play on the radio, but I didn’t care… Whatever I write is just what comes out of me, and I refuse to be judged.”
The Eagle Flies demonstrated Parton’s duality; to be resilient and vulnerable at the same time: “She’s a woman, she knows how to dish it out or take it all/ Her heart is as soft as feathers, yet she endures stormy skies./ And she’s a sparrow when she’s broken / But she’s an eagle when she flies.
Then the sublime Jolene – an incredible speech from one woman to another, and one of the most perfect and unusual songs ever written – and of course 9 to 5, which Parton wrote by tapping her acrylic nails together, writing a song that the female experience.
Whenever Parton is asked about feminism, she sidesteps the question — always alert to the conservatism of her country fans. “I don’t think…I mean, it has to be if being a feminist means I’m all for women, yeah. But I don’t feel like I have to march, hold up a sign, or label myself. I think the way I’ve lived my life, my business and myself speaks for itself. I don’t consider it feminist. It’s not a label I should put on myself. I’m just all about girls.”
She has often said that she does not like expressing her opinion: “I respect my audience too much for that. I respect myself too much for that.” She has Republican friends and Democratic friends and saw the Dixie Chicks ruin their careers because they spoke out against the war in Iraq.
Every part of Parton’s life seems to be lived as a feminist, regardless of what she will admit in public. She will dress however she wants, was one of the first to talk about cosmetic surgery – folds and creases in “tits, butt and waist, eyes and chin and back again” – and brokers her own business deals. Early on, she managed to retain the rights to all her songs – more than 3,000 of them – and refused to sign over half the rights to I Will Always Love You to Elvis Presley. Whitney Houston’s cover still makes her money to this day.
Her personal life is superficially traditional, but again, she does it her way. The eternal marriage to Carl Dean – who never appears in public with her because he doesn’t like wingdings, and in fact no one has seen them together in decades – is maintained while she constantly praises him. Parton, who never had children, even had her tubes tied without telling him.
In her book, she references affairs and addresses the rumor that she is in a lesbian relationship with Judy Ogle, her best friend since grade school and who travels everywhere with her. “Forty years of friendship, Judy and I… one thing we’ve had to overcome is the persistent rumor that Judy and I are lesbian lovers. It is understandable. Most people can’t understand how two women can be so close and devoted to each other.” They sleep in the same bed and Parton doesn’t care who knows.
Here, then, is a woman whose talent and wealth have given her the opportunity to live an independent life, crossing boundaries wherever she goes.
To her, the word feminist connotes man-hating, so she shuns it. Her younger sister reprimanded her for not speaking up when the MeToo movement emerged. Stella Parton, 69, said: “I’m ashamed of my sister for keeping her mouth shut. She can take charge when it comes to something else, but speak of injustice, Dolly Parton. Speak your mind. And speak out. Defend women, and don’t just do it in a little song. Speak out.”
Instead, Parton jokes about being a woman who only leaves the house without hair and makeup at gunpoint. She has even said that she sleeps in her makeup in case an earthquake happens. She has walked this tightrope her entire life, confronting implicit male behavior without alienating her fan base. She never falls.
There really is no one like Dolly, no matter how she describes herself. Whether she calls herself a feminist or not, Dolly understands the lives of working-class women better than anyone. Her ability to bring people together is the work of an instinctively perfect political operator. Why doesn’t she run the world? In a way, she is. As she says, “I’m just all about girls.” Long may she reign.
‘Rockstar is out now