Maybe you’ve heard the rumor about the tattoos.
Some people believe that Dolly Parton’s arms — which haven’t been seen bare in public for decades — are secretly covered in ink. Roseanne Barr claims to have once spied the elusive tats (“No black or blue lines,” she told Craig Ferguson in 2011, “all like, pastel gorgeous bows all over everything”), while Savannah Guthrie grilled Parton about the whispers in a 2014 “Today” show appearance. “People said the other day, the reason you wear sleeves is because you have snakes tattooed all over you,” she told Ms. Guthrie, “and I was like, ‘No I don’t!’” True believers took this only as evidence that she doesn’t have snake tattoos.
Parton’s popularity has endured, in large part, because even after five decades of stardom she remains an enigma in plain sight. Call it the Parton Paradox: Hers has been one of the most scrutinized female bodies in the history of modern celebrity, and yet no one can tell you for certain what her forearms look like.
“Very often someone will wow you, but as you get to know them, the mystery wears off,” Jane Fonda, Parton’s co-star in the feminist film “9 to 5,” told Rolling Stone in 1980. “One of the things that just flabbergasts me about Dolly is the amount of mystery she has.”
And at the moment, the magical mysteries of Dolly Parton seem to be captivating a whole new generation. The 73-year-old is riding high on a trifecta of millennial milestones: She’s the subject of a popular serialized podcast (WNYC’s “Dolly Parton’s America,” hosted by Radiolab’s Jad Abumrad), the inspiration for a forthcoming Netflix anthology series (“Dolly Parton’s Heartstrings,” premiering Nov. 22), and the featured vocalist on an EDM song (the Swedish duo Galantis’s “Faith,” on which Parton appears alongside a Dutch rapper named Mr. Probz). And, as her nearly 5 million Twitter followers will tell you, she knows her way around a “Jolene” meme.
In some sense, though, 2019 is an odd time for a Dolly renaissance. It’s easy to see why someone like Fonda — a kind of octogenarian Greta Thunberg — is enjoying an uptick in intergenerational support from a politically aware cohort too young to remember her days of antiwar activism. Parton, on the other hand, has remained reluctant to make the slightest hint of a political statement, even in these urgent ti
The first episode of “Dolly Parton’s America” centers partly on the “9 to 5” songwriter’s reluctance to call herself a feminist. Earlier this year, Parton’s own sister, Stella, said she was “ashamed” of Dolly for not speaking out more about the #MeToo movement. In response, Parton told The Guardian: “I don’t feel I have to march, hold up a sign or label myself. I think the way I have conducted my life and my business and myself speaks for itself.”
Yet at the 2017 Emmys, Parton looked visibly, uncharacteristically flustered when she appeared onstage to present a best supporting actor award with her co-stars Fonda and Lily Tomlin — both of whom took a seemingly unscripted verbal swipe at President Trump. Steering the conversation back to more familiar territory, Parton did what she’s also done when some interviews have gotten too political or contentious: She pulled from her trusted arsenal of boob jokes.
One reason Parton’s approval rating is so high, though, is that all the attributes that used to set her up for criticism — the outrageous, hyper-femme style; the unapologetic business savvy needed to pull off her late-70s pop crossover; even the so-what acknowledgment of her own cosmetic surgery — are no longer taboo.
A generation that’s grown up with Snapchat-filtered selfies and pop feminism seems to have an innate understanding that artifice doesn’t negate authenticity, or that a penchant for towering wigs and acrylic nails doesn’t prevent someone from being a songwriting genius. (Maybe they even help: Parton claims to have first tapped out the beat of “9 to 5” while idly clicking her fingernails.)
Perhaps that’s why her rhinestone DNA is visible in young artists as varied as Kacey Musgraves and Cardi B — to say nothing of Parton’s own goddaughter Miley Cyrus, who inspired a whole new generation of Parton fans who first came to know her as wacky Aunt Dolly from “Hannah Montana.” Parton sang a duet with Kesha on her 2017 album “Rainbow” — a 1980 Parton hit that Kesha’s mother happened to co-write. At this year’s Grammys, when Parton was honored with the MusiCares person of the year award for her philanthropy, she performed a rousing medley of her hits alongside a who’s who billing of her millennial heirs, like Katy Perry, Maren Morris and Kacey Musgraves.
Like Cher, another 73-year-old multihyphenate icon, Parton has over the past few years ascended to a rarefied level of intergenerational celebrity: a saucy grandmother of social media. When the Gen-Z sheriff and “Old Town Road” mastermind Lil Nas X wondered aloud, on Twitter, “y’all think i can get dolly parton and megan thee stallion on an old town road remix?,” Parton (or at least someone on her team) was quick to respond with a very appropriate unicorn emoji. “I was so happy for him,” Parton said recently of Lil Nas X. “I don’t care how we present country music or keep it alive,” she added. “I’m all about acceptance.”
That quote is classic Dolly: Anyone can see himself or herself in it, no matter which side of the country traditionalists vs. Lil Nas X debate they land on. Both-sides-ism rarely feels as benevolent as it does when coming from Parton, but that’s nothing new. When asked, in 1997, how she was able to maintain fan bases within both the religious right and the gay community, she replied, “It’s two different worlds, and I live in both and I love them both, and I understand and accept both.”
Submitted November 22, 2019 at 06:00PM by goldenrags https://ift.tt/33a36Gl
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