Fans claimed Parton’s feminist legacy with ‘pride and affection,’ AP reports
Country music icon Dolly Parton, who died this week at 80, never publicly embraced the feminist label, according to AP reporter Jocelyn Noveck. Author Lynn Melnick explores that gap in her new book, “I’ve Had to Think Up a Way to Survive: On Trauma, Persistence, and Dolly Parton,” which documents how Parton’s songs shaped Melnick’s own recovery from trauma.
Parton appeared in January 1987 on the cover of Ms. magazine, the publication co-founded by feminist pioneer Gloria Steinem, as one of 12 Women of the Year. Other honorees included a U.S. senator, a renowned novelist, and a former nun who helped Central American refugees. According to Noveck, Parton “smiled brightest of all” on the cover.
The feminist label was still new when Parton was building her career in music, according to the Associated Press. Throughout her life, Parton eschewed the term when asked and avoided political labels more broadly. “A label is just that — a label,” according to the Associated Press.
What readers found in Parton’s lyrics, according to Noveck, was a portrait of an independent artist — “words that made clear how fiercely independent the woman beneath the wig and rhinestones truly was, and what she believed in.”
Melnick said she wrote the book while “searching incessantly” for moments where Parton might have called herself a feminist, and did not find them. What she found, Melnick said, was a songwriter whose actions, words, and songs demonstrated the values regardless.
“She didn’t tell us she was a feminist,” Melnick said. “She showed us — in her actions and her words and in her songs. And I think that’s why people loved her so much.”
For Melnick personally, Parton’s music played a specific role: the book documents how Parton’s songs shaped Melnick’s own recovery from trauma. That personal stake, Melnick has said, is what drew her to examine the gap between Parton’s stated identity and what Melnick sees as feminist values in her work.
Parton’s fans “claimed her just the same — with pride and affection,” according to the Associated Press, regardless of whether Parton herself accepted the term. Melnick’s book, by her account, arrives at a portrait of a songwriter whose lyrics carried the message her public statements did not.