Dolly Parton had her own heroes. Maybe one of the most influential was a woman in town whose look she modeled her own on : bright red lips, big, bleached-blond hair. Parton’s mother called this woman “trash.” The singer thought she was glamorous.
Parton’s death this week had me revisiting her image as much as it did her storied musical catalog. It was hard not to : some of her most memorable jokes and quotes and bits were about just that. As much as Parton loved the specific look she embodied, she was smart enough to know how people would perceive her. Popular music has long been a man’s game, whether it’s the suits calling the shots at the label or the disc jockeys deciding who gets played and who doesn’t. Country music in the ’50s and ’60s was still very much a boys’ club (not much different now, as we’ve seen in recent years), and a busty, blonde girl-next-door with a high soprano could’ve easily been dismissed as nothing more than a sex symbol. But she was always one step ahead.
From the start of her popularity, critics, comics, and the general public ogled and guffawed, but Parton always bit back. Her quick-witted responses to comments about her boobs, her hair, her nails, her style made it clear that she was never going to sidestep the conversation ; she was ready to have it and not at anyone’s expense. One of my favorite videos of Parton is from her 1995 appearance on Letterman, where she listed her pet peeves. She started with a joke about accountants not understanding how expensive it is for her to look that good and ended with “Nobody notices I have a great ass too.” Her sense of humor wasn’t just a suit of armor or some play on the dumb-blonde trope—it helped create a whole new type of pop character who felt both camp and authentic.
More than anything, Parton’s own jokes about her aesthetic allowed space for her talent to breathe. She didn’t dwell on the early negativity and condescension. By turning gross wisecracks into material of her own, she let her incredible songwriting and musicianship take center stage. Being a bestselling artist is one feat, but doing so on the strength of your own great songwriting is rarer than we allow ourselves to appreciate. Many of those songs have become essential parts of the country and pop canons, living multiple lives during her lifetime. They surely have a few more to live in her absence now ; streams for her catalog have already jumped in the days following the news of her death.
For Parton, artistry and presentation were part of the same package. She couldn’t read sheet music but could expertly play a guitar with long, sharp acrylic nails. Her hyper-feminine glamour was not isolated from her genius. It’s what separated her from the boys’ club and empowered generations of women in country music to pick up their own guitars and pens (with or without the nails).
Parton knew there was room for fun in brilliance. A genius didn’t need to merely be studious or serious in their presentation. Parton’s talent was just as present in her gaudiness as it was in her songs, something the world has been mourning losing as much as they have been celebrating ever having. The flood of online memorial posts shows how her fans around the world have her one-liners as ingrained in their brains as deeply as they do her vivid songwriting. Few likely believed that the woman who embraced low culture so warmly would become the gold standard. But Parton always knew she would have the last laugh.
