She Come By It Natural: Dolly Parton and the Women Who Lived Her Songs

by Sarah Smarsh

Working-class women might not be fighting for a cause with words, time, and money they don’t have, but they possess an unsurpassed wisdom about the way gender works in the world. Take, for example, the concept of intersectionality. A working-class woman of color might not know that word, but she knows better than anyone how her race, gender, and economic struggles intertwine.

There is, then, intellectual knowledge—the stuff of research studies and think pieces—and there is experiential knowing. Both are important, and women from all backgrounds might possess both. But we rarely exalt the knowing, which is the only kind of feminism many working women have.

Sometimes a woman who knows her worth ought to lean in. But sometimes she ought to just leave.

The removal of women from country radio by male executives is but an echo of the removal of female stories from foundational and historical texts. Neither, we see from Parton’s songwriting, life, and career, can stop a woman from being heard. She is a modern-day emblem of the wayward woman, the Wild Woman of myth and feminist texts.