Dolly’s a 9 to 5 feminist icon
My earliest memory of country legend Dolly Parton is of stuffing two cushions up my T-shirt and parading around the lounge singing 9to5 while my little brother laughed himself sick. We got yelled at – me for ruining a perfectly good T-shirt by stretching it, Carter because he happened to be nearby.
Mum, who worked something more like 9 to whenever-the-hell-her-boss-said, was often forced to take a ‘‘discipline them all, let God sort them out’’ approach to parenting.
But I bet there were a lot of homes in 1970s-80s’ Aotearoa-NZ where kids were stuffing cushions up their tops and pretending to be Dolly Parton.
Lambasting her looks seemed like a permissible taboo then, naughty but understandable because that was what Parton was, a walking, talking, bootin’ scootin’ boob joke that happened to sing songs.
Parton leaned into that image. Always the first person to make jokes about her ‘‘major assets’’, as she says in the truly wonderful podcast Dolly Parton’s America, ‘‘when in doubt, fall back on a tit joke’’.
She also once said: ‘‘I was the first woman to burn my bra – it took the fire department four days to put it out.’’
Which brings me to my point: Dolly Parton is a feminist icon, whether she likes it or not.
And if you’ve listened to Dolly Parton’s America, a Mariana Trench-deep dive into the life and times of country music’s living saint, which Forbes magazine called ‘‘the best podcast of 2019’’, then you’ll know that she does not. Not at all.
Hosted by Radiolab’s Jad Abumrad and produced by Shima Oliaee, the show starts out as a profile of Parton, a quaint look at a beloved musical touchstone from Abumrad’s home state of Tennessee.
It quickly morphs into an exploration of United States culture through the prism of Parton’s 50-plus year career, peppered with interviews with friends, family, fans – so many fans – and the woman herself.
Over the course of 12 episodes, that image – the walking boob joke one – fades more and more.
There isn’t one stone on Parton’s Tennessee mountain home that’s left unturned, not one awkward, difficult issue Abumrad and Oliaee are too starstruck or fawning to ask about.
Interviews with fellow musicians, co-stars (Jane Fonda clearly still loves her to pieces) and ‘‘Dollyologists’’ – including one who teaches the university class that lent the podcast its name – reframe Parton as an under-appreciated songwriter of Mozart-level prowess (don’t even argue, Parton wrote Jolene and I Will Always Love you on the same day in the space of a few hours), the last ‘‘great unifier’’ in Trump’s fragmented America, a genuinely good person and, yes, a feminist icon.
She is author of what Abumrad describes as ‘‘one of the great feminist anthems of the last 50 years’’, my old theme tune, 9to5 – a song that, for the record, Parton wrote one evening, using her long acrylic nails as percussion to emulate the sound of a typewriter.
So when Parton vehemently replies, ‘‘No! I love men!’’ to the question of whether or not she considers herself a feminist, I’m not gonna lie, it smarts.
Not the least because feminism loves men, too. It loves them so much it believes they’re better than the hormone driven, emotionally stunted workhorses, toxic masculinity reckons they are. But I digress.
I imagine asking my nana, who raised five children while working herself, or even my mum, who went out to work as soon as she could and forged an incredible career for herself that inspires me every day, if they might be feminists.
At one time it would have been received with about the same aplomb as asking if they regularly ate babies. But just like the grandma on the show whom Abumrad interviews to make the same point, they’re still bad-ass. They’re still fighting the good fight.
Parton once wrote a song about ‘‘the other woman’’, which manages to criticise cheating without tearing the other woman to pieces (Jolene is just as much a feminist anthem as 9to5 was, just of another kind).
She’s an advocate of LGBTQI rights, is on record as saying ‘‘a woman would do a great job’’ as president, and has always championed her fellow female singers in an industry that still largely sees them as ornamental.
Speaking to British tabloid The Mirror about why 9to5 is as relevant now as it was in the 1970s, Parton cited the gender pay gap and the #MeToo movement.
‘‘[We had] the same problems then as you have now,’’ she said. ‘‘We should treat each other with respect.’’
See? Feminist as!
She just doesn’t like the word, and that’s fine. Icons don’t need to say the right things. It’s what they do that matters.
Parton once wrote a song about ‘‘the other woman’’, which manages to criticise cheating without tearing the other woman to pieces (Jolene is just as much a feminist anthem as 9To5 was, just of another kind).