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

by Sarah Smarsh

But this story is about much more than that. It’s about leaving home but never really leaving home. It’s about an unfashionable quality in our angry society—grace—and its ability to inspire the best in others. It’s also about a seventy-year-old woman telling a hot young cowboy to dance in place while she plays the fiddle.

“I just thought she was the prettiest thing I’d ever seen. And then when everybody said, ‘Oh, she’s just trash,’ I thought, ‘That’s what I’m going to be when I grow up! Trash!’ ”

One need look no further than her immense LGBTQ following to know that Parton’s transformation from a slut-shamed, talented teenage bumpkin to entertainment superstar contains a universal struggle that has less to do with being Appalachian than with being human.

Be whatever your dreams and your luck will let you be.’ ”

‘I look like a woman, but I think like a man and you better pay attention or I’ll have your money and I’ll be gone.’ ”

Parton fashioned herself as a “floozy” not because she sought men’s approval but because sexualizing herself took control from men who otherwise would have done it for her.

Then I got rid of those lawyers and accountants who didn’t believe in me and got new ones who did.”

“I’m very real where it counts… and that’s inside—as

“All these years people has [sic] thought the joke was on me, but it’s actually been on the public. I know exactly what I’m doing, and I can change it anytime.”

Parton’s place in culture finally shifts from objectified female body to the divine feminine—a sassy priestess in high heels.

“I don’t care if you’re Black, white, straight, gay, women, men, whatever. I think everybody that has something to offer should be allowed to give it and be paid for it.

She is thus a woman of paradoxes: Someone who acts “trashy” and has more class than most. Someone who dresses “like a hooker” and is a family-oriented, self-proclaimed homebody. A giggly blonde who is smarter than her male employees.