With her showstopping blonde wigs, voluptuous figure and unapologetically hyperfeminine appearance, the late, great Dolly Parton was often dismissed as vapid and unserious. The fact that she never changed – nor appeared to care – helped me to understand and accept my own womanhood.
Whenever I doubt myself or my ability to do something (which is often, as someone with Type A neurosis), I turn to a rather scathing 1977 interview which saw Barbara Walters sit down with the then rising country star. In one particularly patronising moment, Walters asks Parton, then aged 30, whether she thought she was a “joke” due to her penchant for outsized blonde wigs and the thick “day drag” glamour Parton had swiftly become known for. With her signature grace, Parton replies: “I know people make fun of me… I enjoy it. I know it. I am sure of myself as a person, and I am sure of my talent. I like the person I am, so I can afford to piddle around with make-up and clothes, because I am secure in myself.”
It’s a clip I have returned to consistently, and seen posted ever more frequently since Parton’s death last week at 80. Each time it pops up on my feed, I find myself swallowing back a throatful of tears and nodding along.
I have always struggled to be taken seriously. As a child, I was a chubby-faced, toothless dumpling with blonde pigtails, a girlishness my mother accentuated with floral sundresses and frilly socks. People would cock their head to one side and coo at my appearance like I was some sort of baby bird. My bookishness was overlooked, or at times, outright ignored – unlike my brother’s, who was always lauded for being bright. People spoke to me slowly, in tones three octaves higher than normal, as though English wasn’t my first language.
My teen years didn’t change much. As my puppy fat fell away, I was left scrawny, until I turned 17 and my boobs kicked in with a vengeance. As my cup size rapidly ascended, I’d notice the stares of boys (and men) as my blouse strained to keep them contained. My sudden voluptuousness saw my thighs thicken too, with my skirts constantly riding up. A teacher once accused me of being promiscuous and “distracting the boys” in assembly. It didn’t matter that my grades were good; I was perceived as the “dumb blonde”, a bimbo interested only in miniskirts and make-up, a harlot sent to make the boys fail their A-Levels. In reality? I was painfully shy child and desperately wanted to hide.
Growing up with these sorts of preconceptions swimming around me impacted me deep into my twenties. I became sick of straddling the fine line of having a bookish brain and a bodacious body. At university, I dyed my hair a dark, chocolate brown, a transformation so striking my own mother had to do a double-take when she first saw me. I swapped out my short skirts, bandage dresses and heels for baggy trousers, oversized jumpers and trainers. I no longer recognised myself when I looked in the mirror. Did my drastic attempts to disguise my buxomness have any bearing on how seriously I was taken? Obviously not.
So, when I first unearthed Parton’s graceful takedown of Walters in my mid-twenties, it resonated deeply, and I have felt a close affinity with Parton ever since. She never allowed her appearance to be a drawback – instead, it was an asset, setting her apart from the men that dominated the country scene. It’s also inextricable from the gifted artist’s songwriting legacy. Hits like “Down From Dover”, which explores being rejected by a lover, and of course “Dumb Blonde”, a wry warning to not treat her like an idiot, could only come from the perspective of a woman making her way in a man’s world.
Parton had the confidence to lean into the cartoonishly buxon blonde persona she preferred precisely because she knew she was the smartest person in most rooms she entered. And she wasn’t only uncompromising when it came to her appearance: a shrewd businesswoman who never sold the publishing rights to any the songs she wrote (despite, for example, Elvis Presley banging on her door), she made billions from classics like “Jolene” and “I Will Always Love You” – much of which she poured into philanthropic causes, like her Imagination Library, which put free books into the hands of millions of children around the world. As Parton told Walters, she was “real” beneath the rhinestones, on the inside, where it should count, and so why should she care if people made fun of her? In fact, she seemed to enjoy playing in people’s faces: in 2009, Parton said in a TV interview: “By the time they think I don’t know what’s goin’ on… I done got the money and gone!”
Parton’s unabashed belief in herself ultimately came to have a profound impact on my own self-confidence. Instead of being ashamed of how my body was seen by others, I’ve embraced it as my own to adorn however I so please. If that means push-up bras and corset tops, five coats of mascara and my blonde hair in its signature blowout, then so be it. What actually matters is what I can do, and the beliefs I hold. The rest is all drag, an exercise in visual marketing.
I do not have even a fraction of Parton’s already much-missed talents. But if you see me in the street and feel compelled to call me a dumb blonde, go right ahead – I’ll enjoy it. This dumb blonde ain’t nobody’s fool.