The Courier & Advertiser (Fife Edition)
Dolly isn’t dumb, isn’t blonde and no imposter – she’s a smart country girl
WThe world knows she’s a rock star – so she’s going to prove to herself that it’s true
hat if I told you Dolly Parton was an imposter? Everybody will always love Dolly Parton. You know it in your heart to be true, but the stats say so too.
No, really – in 2019, hit podcast Dolly Parton’s America dubbed Dolly the USA’s “great unifier”, revealing that not only is she one of the top 10 most loved public figures – she’s also one of the “least hated”.
A secular saint for the modern age, indeed.
I’d even wager a Dolly Parton concert boasts a bigger cross-section of identities than any political arena.
People from all walks of life – rich and poor, young and old, gay and straight, conservative or liberal – find themselves enraptured by the tiny woman with the big hair.
She’s just got that thing. Sparkle, star quality, charm, X factor – whatever you want to call it, she wears it like a rhinestone belt.
So it was no surprise to anyone when she was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame last week.
Well, no surprise to anyone but her. From her Tennessee Mountain Home to Nashville’s Grand Ole Opry, Dolly’s always firmly been – and called herself – a country girl.
So when she was first announced as a candidate for this year’s Hall of Fame cohort, Dolly did the most Dolly thing she could do – she “respectfully” bowed out.
Luckily, the ballots had already gone out, and the powers that be rightly decided she most certainly should be there. Naturally, she accepted the honour graciously.
But even yesterday, after accepting, she confessed to Billboard that she “always thought the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame was just set up for the greatest people in the rock ‘n’ roll business” and “didn’t feel like I really measured up to that”.
And the whole debacle got me thinking – if Dolly Parton doesn’t feel she measures up, does anyone truly feel they do? Or are we all just pretending?
After all, this is a woman who has had 47 top 10 albums and who wrote recordbreaking, in-the-car-wailing ballad I Will Always Love You.
She’s sold more than 100 million records worldwide over 66 years, launched an Imagination Library to give children worldwide free access to books, helped fund Covid vaccination research at the height of the pandemic – and done all of it in skyscraper stilettos.
She’s talented and relentless, generous and shrewd, overtly sexual and sweetly romantic.
Most of all, in her many coats of many colours, Dolly’s unapologetic about who she is; what’s more rock ‘n’ roll than that?
I’ve always felt connected to Dolly. Maybe it’s that we share a name (her middle name is Rebecca, doncha know) and a penchant for glittery eyelids.
Maybe it’s that we’re both always telling stories and revealing little bits of ourselves in the process.
Either way, as someone who is privileged enough to write for a living, I know very well what imposter syndrome sounds like.
Its refrains – “I’m not supposed to be here”, “they think I’m cleverer than I am”, “I don’t deserve this position’” “everyone else knows better than me”, “I’m fooling everyone into thinking I’m worthy of this” – echo in my head constantly.
And when I look at Dolly, even with the years and continents and screens between us, I believe she hears them too.
Imagine being an icon who’s created her own iconography from nothing but a six-string guitar and a girl-crush on the town tramp.
When you’re larger than life, you’ve so much further to fall; so that nagging voice of imposter syndrome must be deafening.
If you were cynical, or if Dolly was someone else – someone like Taylor Swift or the Dixie Chicks, who have been global lightning rods for real country music controversy – you might accuse her initial bow-out of being a publicity stunt to ensure her victory.
A double bluff of politeness, if you like. But the genius of Dolly is that she’s an open secret; everything about her, from her lyrical stories to her chat-show jokes to her towering hair, is overtly made-up, rehearsed and intentional.
She’s a carefully-curated, self-assured persona and ironically her own acknowledgment of her fakery makes her seem all the more real: “I’m not offended by all of the dumb blonde jokes because I know I’m not dumb and I also know that I’m not blonde!”
The veneer of Dolly Parton can’t be cracked because underneath, there’s just more Dolly.
And each one wields enough selfawareness that she can be both the joker and the punchline, every time.
Someone so completely in control of her image has no reason to say something she doesn’t mean.
So when Dolly says she feels she doesn’t measure up, I believe it.
It’s comforting, in a way, to have someone as big as Dolly admit feeling like she’s fallen short.
It shows that even if the whole world – like, literally, the whole entire world – has faith in you, you may still struggle to believe in yourself.
Dolly swears she’s going to make a rock record, so she can “live up to the honour” of her induction. I think we can all agree she’s more than lived up to it already.
But her attitude, in true Dolly Parton style, makes “imposter” feel less like a syndrome and more like a superpower.
The world already knows she’s a rock star – so she’s going to prove to herself that it’s true.
G’aun yersel, Dolly.