I grew up watching Dolly Parton.
I watched “Rhinestone” more times than I could count and sang “9 to 5” long before I had any idea what working 9 to 5 actually meant.
The hair got bigger. The outfits got blingier. The hits cross music boundaries. There were movies and books and Dollywood and a career that never seemed to slow down.
But what fascinated me most about Dolly Parton was never really any of that. It was how someone could be so incredibly famous and still keep part of herself to herself.
For decades, the world knew Dolly, but it didn’t really know Dolly.
She could walk onto a stage covered in rhinestones and tell a story that would make millions of people laugh, yet somehow maintain a line between the person she shared with the world and the life that belonged only to her.
I’ve always admired that. Especially now.
We live in a world that increasingly tells us everything has to be shared. Every opinion. Every argument. Every relationship. Every disappointment. Every detail of our lives.
Dolly never seemed to need that.
She could be open without giving everything away. She could be vulnerable without making every wound public. And she could be enormously successful without constantly reminding everyone else that she was important.
She just was. There are plenty of things to admire about Dolly Parton. She wrote songs that became part of American culture. She built businesses. She wrote books. Her Imagination Library put books into the hands of millions of children. She gave generously and repeatedly used the success she’d earned to help other people.
But perhaps the thing I’ve admired most is simpler. She made being a good person cool.
Not weak. Not naive. Not boring. Cool.
And she managed to do something that seems nearly impossible today: Everybody seemed to like Dolly.
Country fans loved her. People who wouldn’t recognize another country song if it were playing on the radio loved her. Rural America claimed her, but Hollywood did, too. People who probably couldn’t agree on politics, religion or much of anything else could somehow agree on Dolly Parton.
She didn’t accomplish that by sanding away the parts of herself that might make someone uncomfortable.
Quite the opposite. Dolly was unapologetically Dolly.
The big hair. The rhinestones. The Southern accent. Her Tennessee roots. Her faith. The jokes. And underneath all of it was an incredibly smart woman who knew exactly who she was.
She could get asked a difficult question and answer it with humor rather than anger. She could disagree without turning disagreement into hatred. She could laugh at herself without allowing anyone else to determine her worth.
That’s a combination I wish we saw more often.
Somewhere we’ve gotten the idea that strength has to be loud. That conviction requires confrontation. That if we believe something strongly, we have to prove it by making someone on the other side smaller.
Dolly showed otherwise. She didn’t have to abandon what she believed to make room for somebody who believed differently. She simply made room. Maybe that’s why so many different kinds of people saw something in her.
She didn’t demand that you become more like Dolly Parton before she’d welcome you into her world. She just opened the door. And somehow, she made all of it look effortless.
I’m sure it wasn’t. Nobody builds that kind of career and lives that much of a life without difficult days, complicated relationships, mistakes and moments when kindness takes considerably more effort than it appears to from the outside.
Maybe that’s what I’ve come to appreciate most as I’ve gotten older.
Being kind doesn’t mean life has always been kind to you. Being gracious doesn’t mean you don’t have strong opinions. And treating someone with respect doesn’t require agreeing with them.
Those aren’t particularly complicated ideas. Dolly just seemed unusually good at living them.
As a kid, I didn’t understand any of that. I just knew I liked her. I liked her music, liked her movies. And I thought Dolly Parton was pretty darn cool.
All these years later, I still do. Just for very different reasons.
