'I am sure of myself': A look back at Dolly Parton's unspoken feminist legacy
France 24 · LC · trust 46/100
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.
By: FRANCE 24 Dolly Parton performs during an event celebrating the Kansas statewide expansion of Dolly Parton's Imagination Library on August 14, 2023. © Charlie Riedel, AP 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 .
To display this content from YouTube, you must enable advertisement tracking and audience measurement.
One of your browser extensions seems to be blocking the video player from loading. To watch this content, you may need to disable it on this site.
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.”
To display this content from YouTube, you must enable advertisement tracking and audience measurement.
…
Read the original at France 24 →
Open in TruthVane →