Here she comes again
Dolly Parton sashays back into the spotlight Dolly Parton sweatshirts grace the Gucci Spring 2019 catwalk.
Dolly Parton is the It woman of the moment. And thank God: The 72-year-old icon (and this “icon” has earned the title) embodies warmth, confidence and acceptance — which is exactly what we need in our lives right now.
In a standout moment from the Gucci Spring 2019 runway, Parton’s face and signature big hair appeared life-size, spraypainted on the back of a sleeveless denim jacket and silkscreened onto a pink track suit. Alessandro Michele, arguably the most influential tastemaker in the world these days, cast her as muse alongside effigy tributes to Mickey Mouse and Janis Joplin. It was an odd trio that makes sense somehow.
And this past week Parton has been making the chat show rounds with Jen Aniston to promote their movie, Dumplin’, which just premièred on Netflix. Parton doesn’t appear in the film, though her image is plastered all over the teenage protagonist’s bedroom wall, the movie is filled with her music and she did the theme song. (Note: I highly recommend it. Its sincerity is bang on the money for our current mood.) The narrative of the uplifting weeper is basically driven by the question: What Would Dolly Do?
Born the fourth of 12 children in the shadow of Tennessee’s Smoky Mountains, Parton has sold more than 100 million albums and published an incredible 3,000 songs. She has made a splash in celluloid with classics like Best Little Whorehouse in Texas and 9 to 5 and Steel Magnolias.
And ever-modern, Dolly is an avid Instagrammer. She spawned her own hashtag (#Dollyisms) to share her crackling aphorisms and sassy life mottos that show she knows how to take the piss. She makes fun of herself in a way that is so confident. Take her all-time classic quip: “It takes a lot of time and money to look this cheap, honey.” She embraces tacky — but crucially, she never actually looks tacky.
How does she do it? She lets her rocksolid authenticity shine through the spangles. As she put it: “I think there is a little magic in the fact that I’m so totally real but look so artificial at the same time.”
What Parton is really showing is her unique combination of down to earth (she still saves coffee tins to drink out of and once said she likes to pee off the porch sometimes — especially “on those snobs in Beverly Hills”) and outright flamboyant camp (the theme for the upcoming Met Gala, FYI).
Parton projects sunshine itself but has spoken about her own struggles with depression, including a suicide attempt in the ’80s. She also mines the deep imprint left on her by the hardships of her youth. This openness resonates. Parton’s song “Coat of Many Colours” was cited as inspiration for many fashion designers circa Fall 2014, with patchwork versions showing up on the runways of Valentino, Marni and Peter Pilotto.
Dolly lets her rock-solid authenticity shine through the spangles
The song, about her mama making her a coat out of patched-together random fabric because that was all they had, is bittersweet. It goes on to describe how the kids at school made fun of her for it.
Dolly herself was decades ahead of her time with her message to love everybody. She once told Andy Warhol, “I love everybody, and I go right through the bullshit to the core of every person because we are all one. The biggest freaks in the world are my favourite people, like you, like me.”
This atmosphere of acceptance is still palpable at a Dolly show. Seeing her live is pretty much life changing. I saw her one summer night with a gang of my dearest girlfriends. There were drag queens and hipsters, all ages and all colours, belying the image of country music as a white experience. Her shows are like a big ol’ Southern church, where you go to be un- derstood. She starts with charming patter, which is never saccharine, and by the time she belts out “Jolene,” everyone who ever hurt you is bathed in unexpected forgiveness. It’s like she performs some kind of alchemy on your pain, parceling out little goody bags of her confidence and letting some of her starshine rub off on the sea of motley humanity cheering at her wildly.
Parton is now 72, and unafraid to show off her slender legs or wear outfits that cling to her sensational assets. She invented her OTT look on the DIY back home in Appalachia. As a singing child star, she fixated on “a country girl’s idea of what glamour was.”
That meant all-in on gigantic, platinum, orange-can-curl wigs — the higher the hair the closer to God. A noted advocate of double denim and matching her guitar to her outfit, Parton claims she buys most of her showstopper clothes off the rack and bedazzles them herself. If that isn’t inspo, I don’t know what is. Oh, except there’s her charity, which has distributed $100 million to needy kids. And the fact she invested in a (bucket list) theme park in her Home Town to share her success with the community.
So I say we all take a page from the Dolly playbook and smile our way through the new year, despite the pails of crap waiting to hit the fan. Let’s polite them all to death and smile them into submission; Let’s flirt, harmlessly but shamelessly, too. And maybe, let’s tease our hair a little bit and wear some sequins, just for fun.