The last time we covered Dolly Parton, the headline was, “Let’s All Love Dolly Parton Exuberantly.” Because everyone did. She loved the world and all its people, in all their forms, and the easiest job we ever had was loving her back. And now, we’re grieving: Dolly left yesterday at age 80 after a brief battle with cancer, just about 18 months after her husband Carl passed away. It’s too soon, even with a life so well-lived. Ninety would’ve been too soon. A hundred would’ve been too soon. Dolly deserved to live forever.
But, in a lot of ways, she will. The wigs, the makeup, the rhinestones, the stilettos, and yes, the boobs, were the tools of her trade, and she used them to legendary effect, but her brain was her superpower. Dolly’s Imagination Library has put books in the hands of 120 million children. Dollywood itself hosts an bald eagle sanctuary. Her Dollywood Foundation engineered $9 million in donations to help 900 families after a fire in the Smoky Mountains, and Dolly donated $2 million — some personal and some from the foundation — to victims of Hurricane Helene. Dollywood donates to school systems, honors teachers, and funds scholarships. Dolly raised funds for the Red Cross and for HIV/AIDS charities, donated to hospitals, and famously helped fund Covid vaccine research, ultimately receiving one of the first Moderna shots on-camera. She supports same-sex marriage and the trans community. She was a woman of faith who believed both in God and the magic of the individual, refusing to use the Bible to sow hatred and fear. As told by someone who worked on Transamerica with her, Dolly once said she struggled to interpret a passage that said sinning against the Holy Ghost was the only unforgivable one, and concluded, “The Holy Ghost is that part of God that lives in everybody, and the way you sin against it is by not loving everybody with all your heart, for exactly who they are.” She has both a species of Appalachian lichen and an asteroid named for her.
And, oh yeah, she appeared on the country music charts in seven consecutive decades, and won 11 Grammys on 55 nominations. Per Wikipedia, she has released “49 studio albums, four collaborative albums, nine live albums, six soundtrack albums, one extended play and approximately 222 compilation albums globally.” She famously wrote “I Will Always Love You” and “Jolene” on the same day, and has been inducted into 24 Halls of Fame, one of which is the Happiness Hall of Fame. How appropriate; the joy she put into the world is incalculable.
It’s tough to know when to acknowledge a celebrity death with its own post here. Hayden Panettiere was a crushing loss, especially to those of us who loved her on this very site, regularly, in the comments of the Nashville recaps. Hayden’s death was so sudden, so tragic, and a product of a life lived without the support systems that might have kept her and countless other child actors with us; presenting that with a slideshow that’s like, “CHECK OUT HER OUTFITS,” felt tonally weird. For Dolly, it feels right, natural. Pint-size in stature, towering in every other way, she made herself inseparable from her indomitable image. Celebrating her fashion, then, does feel like the correct celebration of her life. To USA Today, she said, “My joke of, ‘It costs a lot of money to look this cheap’ ‒ that’s so true because I like to look a certain way. I can’t just put on a little bit of makeup and think I look good because I don’t look good with a little bit of makeup. I like to wear a lot of makeup. It fits my personality. Even if somebody says, ‘Oh God, she was so over-made.’ Well, if it fits me then I’m going to make everybody around me happy because I’m going to feel good myself.”
Back in 2022, we celebrated her birthday with a 59-photo slideshow, which I highly recommend. Rather than repeat or republish that, I decided to go looking for OTHER photos; there might be a couple repeats above, but it’s mostly different, giving you therefore TWO Dolly Parton retrospectives to bask in today.
Dolly was wise. Dolly was generous. Dolly was humble. Dolly was brilliant. Dolly was unapologetically, bravely, herself. Thank you, Dolly. We owe you for the example you set, and we owe it to you to follow the path you blazed in those towering peep-toe pumps.
