This month we honor a very beloved Kickass Woman, Dolly Rebecca Parton Dean. Dolly Parton was beloved by people across America for her music, her personality, and her philanthropy. The greatness of Dolly Parton is one of the few things that almost everyone, regardless of political affiliation, seems to agree upon.
Dolly’s origin story has been told and retold so often as to make it a modern American legend. She was born 1946 in a one-room cabin in Tennessee, one of twelve children. Her father sharecropped until he was able to buy and work his own small farm. He also worked in construction. Dolly has credited her father for her skill with business and her mother for her skills in music and entertaining.
Performing her song “Jolene” with her goddaughter, Miley Cyrus.
Dolly started performing as a young child and performed at the Grand Ole Opry for the first time at the age of 13. She became a successful songwriter for others and had her own first country music hit with “Dumb Blonde” in 1966. Decades came and went and her career had ups and downs, but she was consistently writing, performing, recording, and acting from then until her death on August 25, 2026 at the age of eighty.
She wrote over 3000 songs. Her musical legacy of original songs includes “Coat of Many Colors,” “9 to 5,” “Yellow Roses,” “I Will Always Love You,” and “Jolene.”
Above: video of the first performance of Coat of Many Colors, performed on the Porter Wagoner Show in 1970
Dolly is remembered for her musical legacy, but she was even more beloved for her status as a protector of marginalized people. She was especially beloved by the LGBTQIA+ community, who she vocally and visibly supported LGBT people as early as the 1980s. Her production company (which produced Buffy the Vampire Slayer!) co-produced Common Threads: Stories from the Quilt in 1989, and she contributed the song “Travelin’ Through” to the 2005 movie Transamerica. She supported gay marriage legalization and transgender rights.
“Travelin’ Through” at the 78th Academy Awards in 2006
She also kept her childhood poverty in mind and supported those in her region and across the nation who struggled with poverty. One example lies in her creation of Dollywood, a theme park in her home town of Pigeon Forge, Tennessee.
She purchased and created Dollywood because:
“I always thought that if I made it big or got successful at what I had started out to do, that I wanted to come back to my part of the country and do something great, something that would bring a lot of jobs into this area.”
Currently Dollywood employs 4000 people. As of 2022, employees of Dollywood who choose to attend college have their tuition, fees, and books paid for by Dollywood.
Probably the project that is most near and dear to the hearts of the Smart Bitch community is her founding of Dolly Parton’s Imagination Library. Dolly founded this program in 1995 and dedicated it to her father, who never learned to read or write. Under this program, the Dollywood Foundation partners with local organizations to provide one free age-appropriate book a month to children from birth until their fifth birthday at no cost to families. The program was launched in Parton’s home county (Sevier County) and is now active across the U.S. as well as Canada, Australia, Ireland, and the United Kingdom. As of 2026, 120 million children received books through this program.
The Muppet Show 1987, performing Everyday People written by Sly Stone
Since our feelings about Dolly Parton tend to be personal, I hope you’ll indulge me in a personal story. One day, when I was maybe around ten years old, my auntie came over to help my mom with something or other and they put on a Dolly Parton record. I had just learned a new word so I felt very sophisticated and clever when I said, “Ugh, I hate Dolly Parton, she’s such a bimbo!”
Well, my friends, my auntie’s head whipped around and she fixed me with a look I’ve never seen before or since and said, and I quote her exactly because it’s forever engraved in my brain, “Oh no, she is not! She is a very shrewd business woman!”
Video for Backwoods Barbie, 2009
The ensuing conversation permanently altered my brain chemistry and challenged my young ideas about femininity for the better.
Dolly taught a lot of us about how one can choose and create a public persona and use it to both advance a public life and protect a private one.
She was candid about her fashion and her plastic surgeries, and when discussing them she somehow managed to convey a consistent message of loving yourself for exactly who you are.
Video for “After the Gold Rush” from 1999, written by Neil Young, performed by lifelong friends and collaborators Emmylou Harris, Dolly Parton, and Linda Ronstadt. These women were the country music holy trinity of my youth. As I grew older I learned from their commitments to collaborating with and lifting up other artists as well as themselves. I also loved their refusal to be pigeon-holed into any one musical category, and their advocacy of new music and very very old music alike.
I could never enumerate all of the ways that Dolly Parton made life better. Picking videos for this post feels impossible given not only her own songwriting achievements but also her covers and collaborations. In terms of philanthropy – well, it’s difficult to properly do justice to the life of someone who gave us things as varied as the Covid vaccine and Buffy the Vampire Slayer! Here’s a few articles that highlight her advocacy and philanthropy:
Supporting LGBTQIA+ Causes: “10 times Dolly Parton cemented her status as an LGBTQ+ icon” by Christopher Wiggins and Neal Broverman, The Advocate
Saving Bald Eagles: “Dolly Parton helped save endangered bald eagles” by Sophie Ellis, Discover Wildlife
Support Black Lives Matter: “‘Of Course Black Lives Matter,’ Dolly Parton Tells Billboard” by Camila Domonoske, NPR
Protecting animals: “Dolly Parton Had a Big Heart for Lonely and Neglected Dogs,” PETA
Supporting Healthcare: “Dolly Parton’s health care legacy: Two decades of giving,” by Austin Littrell. Fact checked by: Keith A. Reynolds, AC Baltz, Medical Economics
Innovative giving after the Smokey Mountain wildfires: “Dolly Parton Provides Fire Victims ‘Shoulder To Lean On'” by Andrew Flanagan, NPR
Encouraging Tennessee kids to stay in school: “How Dolly Parton Helped Lower Dropout Rates by Nearly 30% In Her Area: “Our Patron Saint’” by Rosie Colosi, Today.com
What could possibly close us out but the video for “9 to 5” from 1980?
What are your
I just don’t know what to say about Dolly that hasn’t already been said. I rarely cry about celebrity deaths and this one hit me hard. There are some people that just by getting the best version of themselves, show all of us how to be better. I waited till Friday, the end of my work week, and then I just let myself grieve.
One thing I did reflect on and mentioned to several people was that I’m so glad she had the chance to grow into her fame before social media and the constant online culture of today.
I was just a kid, but I remember how nasty the tabloids were about her in the 80s and 90s. The lack of privacy has gotten so much worse. I think it’s wonderful that she and her husband got to have a marriage that worked for both of them outside of the limelight.
She mentioned in an an interview after Carl retired from the asphalt business, sometimes they liked to just drive around the country in an RV. She said they would pull up to the drive thru and sometimes the workers would comment “you sound a lot like Dolly Parton” and she said she’d just laugh and say “well, how ’bout that.” I totally believe without all her hair and makeup, she could probably fly incognito, especially passing through.
I like to think it would be a little bit like being visited by an angel…
Dolly was the best of us, just the best of us.
What a lovely post for a wonderful woman. Thank you, @Carrie S.
We will never again see her like.
My goddaughter works in child welfare in a low income area of North Carolina. She wrote a grant proposal to the Imagination Library and now every child who comes through her office leaves with a book and a subscription. We signed her nieces up as soon as they were eligible, and it’s a big day in their household when their books arrive.
Dolly is who we should all aspire to be.
I love the duet with Kermit. She sings a soul-funk tune with a Muppet. Only Ms. Parton!
I saw so many stories on social media of how she embraced trans women, even paying for top surgeries, that I can’t help but believe that she truly walked in my favorite Bible verse Matthew 25:40.
I will say- for anyone who wants to get a little more into her story (including the more complicated & less palatable parts) the audio documentary Dolly Parton’s America by Radiolab’s Jad Abumrad is really neat, and has a lot of archival audio & original music.
I’ve loved Dolly since I was little. I thought she had the voice of an angel, and liked how sparkly and colorful her c!othes were.
As I grew older, I admired her songwriting, and how she was a wise business woman. She was underestimated, and remained kind, giving, and a woman of faith throughout.
She left the World better than she found it, and I can’t imagine a better legacy.
I live in the NC mountains, very near the Tennessee border and about a two hour drive from Dollywood. (It is only about 45 miles away, but driving in the mountains makes things take longer.) Dolly Parton is revered all over the mountains because of her innate goodness and her desire to help people in the area, particularly from the area where she was born. I cannot remember hearing anyone say anything negative about her. She lived her life in a way that would make anyone proud. She is a woman who could have been a billionaire, but it was more important to her to be a force for good in the world. She will be missed.
I didn’t appreciate her when I was younger, but I sure do now. Her like will not soon come again.
Silver Dollar City knew Dolly was looking to do something in Pigeon Forge, and they approached her to forge a partnership and turned Silver Dollar City into Dollywood. I was there the opening year of 1986. While a lot of Silver Dollar City still existed in structure, it was given a Dolly “makeover”–they added a lot of new rides, created a small Dolly museum, etc… I was a girl in Dolly heaven. I bought a pink Dollywood t-shirt I still own.
That famous cinnamon bread from Dollywood is actually from the Silver Dollar City family.
After the wildfires, she gave impacted families monthly financial help. She gave money after Hurricane Helene.
East Tennessee has truly been blessed by Dolly. She proved to the world that you can be born in Southern Appalachia and make something of yourself. She always felt like family to me–my family has been in East Tennessee since the mid-1700s. And contrary to what many believe, a lot of East Tennessee fought for the North, including my family. (I was not raised in Tennessee, but I have been visiting family there for my entire life and have a strong attachment to that area, and my parents retired to the small homestead.)