Beloved country star Dolly Parton was many things to her fans, including an actor, singer, philanthropist and entrepreneur. But after her death on Tuesday at the age of 80, some admirers are remembering her as something she never overtly claimed: feminist icon.
Twelve "Women of the Year" are pictured smiling on the January 1987 cover of "Ms." magazine, co-founded by feminist pioneer Gloria Steinem. They include a US senator, a renowned novelist, a former nun who helped Central American refugees and, smiling brightest of all, Dolly Parton.
The beloved country superstar, who died this week at 80, never embraced the feminist label. She eschewed it when asked, just as she carefully avoided political labels.
But when Parton was building her groundbreaking career in music, more telling were Parton’s life choices, social alliances and especially her lyrics – words that made clear how fiercely independent the woman beneath the wig and rhinestones truly was, and what she believed in.
“People who haven’t listened to Dolly Parton or to feminism may be surprised to learn that they go together,” Steinem wrote in that 1987 magazine issue. “She has used her business sense to bring other women and poor people along with her. And her flamboyant style has turned all the devalued symbols of women to her own ends.”
“If feminism means each of us finding our unique power, and helping other women to do the same,” Steinem wrote, “Dolly Parton certainly has done both.”
Parton may not have claimed to be a feminist, but her female fans claim her as an icon with pride and affection.
“She didn’t tell us she was a feminist,” says Lynn Melnick, author of “I’ve Had to Think Up a Way to Survive: On Trauma, Persistence, and Dolly Parton”.
“She showed us – in her actions and her words and in her songs. And I think that’s why people loved her so much.”
At the Newport Folk Festival in 2019, a cheeky Parton, then in her early 70s, drew delighted cheers when she sang lyrics skewering double standards: “My mistakes are no worse than yours just because I’m a woman.”
Parton had just explained to the crowd that the song was a reference to a frank conversation she’d had with her husband soon after marriage, when he asked if she’d been with other men.
“When you boys get married you want us to be just as pure as snow – well, sometimes we’re not!” she told the crowd. “This is for you, gals, and your boys just gotta take it, OK?”
The remarks were vintage Parton, making a point without alienating anyone. She was, after all, about relatability.
“One thing about Dolly is that no matter what side of the political spectrum you’re on, you think she’s with you,” Melnick says.
“Everyone claims her. And so as a feminist I always thought, well, obviously she’s a feminist, and the more I read about her and wrote about her, it was just undeniable – first of all because of how she lived her life completely on her own terms.”
She and Carl Dean met in 1964 and were married for nearly 60 years. But they both gave each other a lot of space and freedom to live their own lives. After she convinced Dean to attend an awards show early on in her career, they both quickly realized it was just not his thing.
"He said, 'Look, now I want you to do everything you want to do and I wish you the best, but don't ever ask me to go to another one of these damn things 'cause I ain't going,'" Parton recalled.
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Read moreEmbraced across divides, Dolly Parton leaves a lasting legacy
To music writer Evelyn McDonnell, Parton’s looks – the eyelashes, the big hair, the curves – served as an invisible cloak, helping her freely express progressive feminist views while leaning into the ultra-feminine.
“She took the objectification of being a pop star and embraced it,” says McDonnell, editor of the music anthology “Women Who Rock” and a professor at Loyola Marymount University. “It was like her magic cloak – she could be saying feminist things and doing feminist things and modelling a life and a voice that was outspoken, progressive, political. But you saw the package and you’re like, ‘Oh, okay.’ It made it safe.”
“She knew she was blonde and pretty, and that it was always going to work against her,” says music writer Caryn Rose. “So she figured out how to make it work FOR her. There's not anything more feminist than that.”
McDonnell says Parton’s values are clear from songs like “9 to 5”, which she wrote for the movie in which she starred with Lily Tomlin and Jane Fonda about a tyrannical boss who made a sport out of sexual harassment.
“It’s all about feminism, right? About women in the workplace, economic empowerment, pushing back against the male supervisor, uniting women’s voices,” she says.
Equal pay was just one of the issues Parton wrote about. She also, Melnick notes, addressed reproductive justice, teen pregnancy and "all of these very feminist issues ... she was just doing the work quietly, in her songs”.
One such song was “The Bargain Store", from 1975. “I may have just what you’re looking for, if you don’t mind the fact that all the merchandise is used," Parton wrote. “But with a little mending, it could be as good as new.”
Parton said later that country radio shunned the song because they took it to be about prostitution, when it was really about healing after a relationship.
Then there was “Down from Dover,” about a teenage single mother. “I wrote that back during a time when people didn’t talk about unwed mothers,” Parton told Vulture in 2023. “They wouldn’t play that on the radio.”
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Melnick posits that Parton exemplified so-called third-wave feminism, which gained currency in the ’90s with a focus on individual choice. A feminism where one could wear big heels, big hair and sparkly rhinestones.
And that’s exactly how Parton framed her looks in a 1977 interview with Barbara Walters: “It's certainly a choice.”
Parton said later that people had warned her against talking to Walters, who they said would chew her up and spit her out.
But a 31-year-old Parton, with quiet confidence and a generous smile, emerged looking far better than her interlocutor, who relied largely on sexist assumptions.
Walters asked if she was faithful to her husband, and why she was even married if she was constantly travelling. She even asked Parton if her famous breasts were real – saying an assistant wanted to know.
Walters then asked Parton to stand up and display her body. She did so, politely.
"But do you ever feel that you're a joke?" Walters asked.
Parton easily explained why she was comfortable with the jokes about her – because she was, in fact, in on them.
"Oh, I know they make fun of me, but actually, all these years, the people have thought that the joke was on me, but it's actually been on the public," she said.
“I know exactly what I am doing and I can change it at any time,” Parton added.
“I make more jokes about myself than anybody ... I am sure of myself as a person and I am sure of my talent. I am very content. So I can afford to diddle around with makeup and clothes and stuff because I am secure with myself.”
And what could be more feminist than that?
*(FRANCE 24 with AP) *
