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

by Sarah Smarsh

“Womanhood was a difficult thing to get a grip on in those hills, unless you were a man,” Parton wrote. “[Glamorous women in magazines] didn’t look as if men and boys could just put their hands on them anytime they felt like it, and with any degree of roughness they chose. The way they looked, if a man wanted to touch them, he’d better be damned nice to them.”

Porter was very much like my dad and my brothers and the men I grew up with. They were just manly men, and a woman’s place was where you told her to be. And so I would always stand up to him.… And we fought like hell, and he showed his ass about it, rather than just letting life flow.

“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.”

Dolly very serenely smiled and said, ‘When I was young and had nothing, I wanted to be rich and famous, and now I am. So I’m not going to complain about anything.’ ”