Most public figures would push away any uncouth stereotypes that float their way, but country icon Dolly Parton has embraced them. She’s told the story of modeling her signature look after the “town trollop” many times over the years. And her sense of humor has a subversive undertone that lets you know that not only is she in on the joke. She made the joke. She’s making you laugh.
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Dumb blondes, high-maintenance beauty queens, these kinds of feminine tropes have often followed close behind Parton, which she points out and inherently refutes with her sharp wit. But other misconceptions about Parton are far more intimate. And indeed, they often are when it comes to women in the music industry and beyond. Her tight clothes, hourglass figure, and heavy makeup have led to rumors that Parton used her body to achieve success.
This incredulity went hand-in-hand with Parton’s unlikely success story of growing up dirt-poor in Appalachia to becoming one of the biggest country stars of all time. And the fact that Parton’s late husband, Carl Dean, was so removed from the public eye that people thought he didn’t exist didn’t help Parton’s case. Nevertheless, she always batted away the speculative flames, later telling Dan Rather, “I never slept with anybody to get anywhere. If I slept with somebody, it’s ‘cause I wanted to.”
If Parton’s rise to fame seemed unlikely, she argued, it was only because her success was a direct result of a unique blend of musicality and work ethic from her mother and father, respectively.
Dolly Parton Attributed Her Success to These Qualities of Her Mom and Dad
From her style to her prolific, multi-faceted career, Dolly Parton’s success story is certainly an exceptional one. And given misogynistic assumptions about how women can achieve the things they do, critics and haters have often tried to belittle Parton’s success as being more contingent on looks than talent. But not even the most attractive person could build an entire empire on looks alone, and Parton didn’t, either.
“My daddy, I watched him maneuver,” Parton told Dan Rather. “I watched how he could trade and barter. They call it good horse sense or horse trading. My daddy was so smart. And I just watched him through the years. My daddy was also one of those people that was really willing to work. He was up all the time, up early having to farm before he went to work on construction or doing whatever he had to do to keep food on the table. But he always just managed to make some of the best deals and some of the best choices. I was very influenced by that.”
“I got my music from my mother’s side,” Parton continued. “Most musical people, musicians don’t want to work at anything else. So, I got my work ethic from my dad. I got my music from my mama.”
Parton said she began her career leaning heavily into the business side of things, securing lucrative publishing deals that she stuck to throughout her career—even when that meant rejecting Elvis Presley’s request to cover one of her most famous songs. (For extra Parton goodness: check out this video of her singing alongside her mom and dad from the late 1970s.)
Photo by Michael Ochs Archives/Getty Images
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