How Dolly Parton taught millions of women to be unapologetically glam

When news of Dolly Parton’s death spread Tuesday afternoon, there was only one fitting way to pay tribute. As one viral post put it: “Girls, we gotta put on our finest push-up bra for our good sister Dolly Parton!”

Parton, who died Tuesday aged 80 in Nashville, Tennessee, leaves behind a colossal legacy; she was an inimitable talent who shaped music culture and countless lives through her philanthropic efforts. But part of that legacy was also her power to inspire women to be unapologetically glam through her unforgettable style: her signature peroxide wigs, rhinestone jumpsuits, bulletproof push-up bras, shoulder pads, red nails and six-inch stiletto heels. Across her seven-decade career, Parton challenged prevailing stereotypes about how women should present themselves. She subverted the blonde bimbo caricature, and did it all with an all-knowing wink.

Parton, who referred to her style as the “country girl’s idea of glamor,” deconstructed many tropes that women are typically shamed for: having fun with style, accentuating big breasts or displaying any flamboyance that might draw too much attention.

She did all of this in the face of criticism from a young age. In her 2023 book, Behind the Seams: My Life in Rhinestones, she recalled dealing with her shocked preacher grandfather when she was a child, and the parents of her school friends, who thought she was “a bad influence.” She also recalled being told by record label executives that she wouldn’t be taken seriously in music because of her appearance. As she put it, they said: “You look more like a hooker than you do a singer.” She was a 5-foot-tall blonde bombshell armed with an arsenal of quick, flirty, mildly self-deprecating retorts. She outsmarted every bit of criticism that came her way.

And this self-awareness was pure genius. She once said in an interview that her hair was so fake “it was a fire hazard,” and that she’s not offended by dumb blonde jokes because “I know I’m not dumb – and I’m not blonde either.” She never shied away from the artificiality that went into honing her glamorous style, when she delivered the line “It costs a lot of money to look this cheap” while starring in the 1982 movie, The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas. She addressed this theme again in her 2008 song “Backwoods Barbie” (“I'm just a Backwoods Barbie, too much makeup, too much hair…Don't be fooled by thinking that the goods are not all there.”) She was also no stranger to making jokes about her physique, as she told David Letterman on The Late Show in 1995: “Nobody notices I’ve got a great ass, too.” As the lyrics went on her debut album in 1966, “This dumb blonde ain’t nobody’s fool.”

That was the not-so-quiet confidence of Parton; she was the most sparkly person in every room she entered. And no rhinestone was left unturned.

In 2006, the “Jolene” singer admitted that her style inspiration was the town tramp, whom she idolized as a child growing up in the Great Smoky Mountains of Tennessee. “I kind of patterned myself after what they called the town tramp in my hometown, when I was little,” she said. “I just told her how beautiful she was, ‘cause she had this beautiful yellow hair. She left a big impression on me… Different ones would say, ‘Oh, she’s just trash.’ And I thought, ‘That’s what I want to be when I grow up. I’m gonna be trash!’ And that is how I look.”

When it came to her makeup and aesthetic, Parton’s motto was simple: “More is more.” In her 2023 book, she wrote about how she started going to bed with her make-up on while she was living in LA, just in case an earthquake sent her onto the streets in the middle of the night. “My eye doctor put a stop to me wearing [mascara] though,” she told The Independent. “He said, ‘You can’t wear your eye make-up at night!’”

Parton loved makeup from a young age. As a child living in rural Tennessee, she would find ways to create makeup from pokeberries and plants she found in the fields. “I would strike Mama’s old kitchen matches to make eyebrows and my beauty mark,” she said in her book. “Still, I find myself mixing and matching different makeups for different colors.”

Parton’s style became a recognizable and distinct brand that no musician has come close to replicating. At the time of her death, Parton reportedly had more than 350 wigs, more than 2,000 pairs of shoes and a 50,000-square-foot archive of sequined stage outfits.

It’s not hard to look into pop culture and see Parton’s sartorial impact. There are traces of the Dolly aesthetic in artists like Miley Cyrus, Kacey Musgraves and Sabrina Carpenter, who have had respective glittery cowgirl phases. Pop star Carpenter, who employs distinctly country influences, was one of the last artists to collaborate with Parton before her death for a remix of “Please, Please, Please,” in which the pair looked like twins with their platinum blonde blowouts and white minidresses in the music video, despite the five decades between them.

One of the strongest messages Parton has passed on to the next generations of artists — and a huge part of her style influence — is that she never really gave mind to anyone else’s opinions about how she looked. “I never cared what other people did, and I never cared what other people said about what I wore,” Parton told Vogue when her book was released. “It was more important that I be comfortable in my own clothes and in my own self.”

It is fitting, then, that Parton reportedly requested to be laid to rest wearing her signature high heels, and – perhaps because she deserves a break from decades in sequinned two-pieces – a comfortable cotton dress.

Whatever you do to honor Dolly this week, do it wearing full glam, fake tan and the thickest bra you can find. And next time you look in the mirror and wonder whether you are “too much” or overdressed, think: What would Dolly do?