Dolly Parton once entered a Dolly Parton lookalike contest and lost.
It is exactly the kind of story that belongs to her. For decades, Parton wore enormous blonde wigs, rhinestones, long nails and clothes designed to make sure nobody missed her when she entered a room. She joked about her appearance before anyone else could. She knew people thought it was too much, but she also knew she had no intention of becoming less.
Dolly Parton died on August 25, 2026, at the age of 80, after a career that lasted more than six decades. She leaves behind songs that have outlived generations, films, businesses and a literacy programme that has put hundreds of millions of books into children’s hands.
There will be many ways to remember Dolly Parton. One of them is as a woman who understood exactly what people underestimated about her, and knew how to turn it to her advantage.
The Joke Was Never Really on Dolly
Parton never pretended her famous appearance was accidental. She openly talked about creating it.
Her inspiration famously came from a woman in her hometown whom others considered “trash”. Young Dolly saw something entirely different. She saw the blonde hair, high heels, makeup and fitted clothes and thought she was beautiful.
As Parton became famous, the blonde hair got bigger and the outfits got shinier. It would have been easy for people to decide that the woman underneath all of it could not possibly be serious, and sometimes they did.
But Parton understood something about being underestimated.
You do not always have to correct people immediately. Sometimes you can simply let them discover how wrong they were.
Behind the wigs was a songwriter who composed more than 3,000 songs. She moved from country music into pop, television and films at a time when crossing those boundaries was hardly guaranteed. Songs such as Jolene, 9 to 5 and I Will Always Love You became part of popular culture far beyond country music.
She never had to dress differently to be taken seriously. Eventually, everyone else had to learn to take the woman in rhinestones seriously.
She Knew What Her Work Was Worth
One of the best Dolly Parton stories involves Elvis Presley.
Elvis wanted to record I Will Always Love You. For a songwriter, having Elvis Presley record your song could have been the kind of opportunity you accepted before anyone had time to change their mind.
Parton was thrilled too. Then Elvis’s manager, Colonel Tom Parker, told her that they would need at least half of the song’s publishing rights. She said no.
It was not an easy decision. She later spoke about being heartbroken over it. But the song was already successful, belonged to her publishing company and, as she explained years later, was something she wanted to leave to her family.
So Elvis never recorded it.
Nearly two decades later, Whitney Houston did.
Houston’s 1992 version for The Bodyguard turned I Will Always Love You into an even bigger global phenomenon, while Parton still owned her publishing rights. (latimes.com)
Today, conversations about artists owning their work are common. Musicians speak openly about masters, copyright and contracts. Parton was protecting her ownership long before these conversations became mainstream.
There was always a sharp business mind underneath the deliberately over-the-top image.
Before Everyone Had a ‘Personal Brand’, Dolly Had Dolly
It is difficult to mistake Dolly Parton for anybody else. That sounds obvious now, but it is also one of the reasons her public image lasted for so long.
The hair, the clothes, the Tennessee accent she never polished away and the self-deprecating jokes all became unmistakably Dolly.
None of it required her to become more acceptable as she became more successful.
Over the years, that identity expanded well beyond music. There were films, television appearances and business ventures, while Dollywood grew into one of Tennessee’s major tourist attractions.
Long before celebrities were expected to turn themselves into brands, Parton had created a world that was immediately recognisable as hers.
Yet it rarely felt like she was trying to sell an image of perfection.
She could make herself the punchline, talk about plastic surgery and laugh about the wigs without ever seeming uncomfortable about any of it. She seemed remarkably uninterested in convincing anyone that Dolly Parton woke up looking like Dolly Parton.
Perhaps that is why the image never swallowed the person.
Then There Were the Books
For all the records, rhinestones and famous stories, one of Parton’s biggest legacies began somewhere else.
Her father, Robert Lee Parton, could not read or write. Parton has spoken often about how intelligent and hardworking he was despite never having had the chance to become literate.
In 1995, she started the Imagination Library in her home county in Tennessee in his honour.
The idea was wonderfully simple: children would receive free books.
The programme grew far beyond Tennessee. It now operates across the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, Australia and Ireland, sending free books to children from birth until the age of five. It crossed the milestone of 200 million books gifted in 2023 and has continued distributing millions more every month.
Her father reportedly called the programme the thing he was proudest of her for. There is something fitting about that being part of Dolly Parton’s story.
One of the most famous women in the world could have attached her name to almost anything, and she chose to put it on books arriving at children’s homes.
Somehow, Everybody Claimed Dolly
Parton’s popularity also did something increasingly unusual. It travelled across groups that often agreed on very little.
She came from rural Tennessee and remained deeply connected to country music, while also becoming a pop culture figure loved far outside its traditional audience. Younger generations discovered her decades after her first hits, and people who could not name another country singer still knew Dolly.
She had convictions, but she rarely seemed interested in turning every appearance into a declaration.
When she did put her money behind something, the choices could speak loudly enough. Her philanthropy ranged from children’s literacy and disaster relief to a $1 million contribution towards COVID-19 vaccine research at Vanderbilt University.
Perhaps her humour helped too.
Parton could be glamorous without pretending glamour was important. She could be wealthy without rewriting the poverty she grew up in, and she could be deeply ambitious while still laughing at herself.
People did not need to share her background, her music taste or her worldview to understand her.
Never Make Yourself Smaller for Someone Else’s Comfort
There is a particular kind of advice women receive when they want to be taken seriously: tone it down, dress differently, stop drawing so much attention to yourself, look professional and sound professional. The expectation is often that they should become easier for other people to categorise.
Dolly Parton spent much of her life doing the opposite.
She did not remove the parts people mocked once she became successful enough to leave them behind. The wigs, rhinestones, accent and jokes all stayed.
The songwriting stayed too, along with the business sense that made her walk away from Elvis Presley rather than surrender ownership of her work. She also carried with her the memory of a father who could not read, eventually turning that memory into millions of books for children he would never meet.
Dolly Parton made herself impossible to overlook, and people could laugh at the hair if they wanted to.
