Part 3
So the opening question answers itself. Taking Dolly Parton seriously does not mean ignoring the wigs, the breasts, the punchlines. It means taking the joke seriously as craft. Her body is not a distraction from her genius; it is one of its instruments. Mae West in She Done Him Wrong (1933) taught American movies that a woman could author her own bawdiness and make men the punchline. Dolly took that lesson, added a Tennessee drawl, a coat of many colors, and a Led Zeppelin joke, and built a career where the public thought it was laughing at her while she was laughing all the way to the bank, the studio, and the cultural immortality. The joke was never on Dolly. It was on anyone who thought the rhinestones were the whole story. That’s the armor. That’s the art. And that’s why the next copy—drag queen, impersonator, or kid in a wig—only proves the original was always in on it.
If I Hadn’t Been a Girl, I’d Have Been a Drag Queen: Dolly, Impersonators, and the Art of the Copy
There is a sentence from Dolly Parton that should be printed on a mirror in every drag dressing room from Nashville to Bushwick: “If I hadn’t been a girl, I’d have been a drag queen for sure.” She says it casually, almost as a throwaway, when asked about the thousands of people who dress up as her. Boys and girls. All the time. And her verdict? “I think it’s fun. I think it’s a great compliment.” That is not the sound of a celebrity tolerating imitation. That is the sound of an author watching her own book get read aloud in a hundred different accents.
The setup matters. In the interview, the host asks if it gets weird seeing so many people copy her look. Dolly does not flinch. She does not lawyer up. She does not talk about protecting her brand the way a modern pop star might. She treats the copy as a compliment, because she understands something that most famous people never quite grasp: a copy does not compete with the original. It confirms that there is an original worth copying. When you dress as Dolly Parton, you are not stealing her act. You are advertising it. You are proof that her authorship is so strong it can survive a million wigs, a million pink rhinestones, a million Tennessee drawls.
That is why her look has always read as costume, not confession. Dolly told Barbara Walters—in a moment that has since become a late-night clip—that she would “never stoop so low as to be fashionable.” Fashion is what everyone else is doing. Dolly is doing Dolly. The blonde wigs, the extreme outfits, the heels, the nails, the makeup: none of it is an accident, and none of it is a lie. It is drag in the purest sense—gender as performance, image as authorship, the body as a stage. She is not hiding behind the artifice. She is operating it. When she says she knows exactly what she is doing and can change it at any time, she is describing the difference between a costume and a cage.
Watch RuPaul’s Drag Race (2009–present) for five minutes and you will see the same philosophy in a different key. RuPaul built an empire on the idea that imitation is tribute, not theft. Queens lip-sync for their lives, but they also cite their mothers: Cher, Madonna, Diana Ross, Dolly. Dolly belongs on that wall because she never asked the culture to take her seriously on its own terms. She asked it to take her seriously on hers. The drag queen does not mock the star. The drag queen translates the star. And translation, as any writer knows, is the highest form of reading.
Drag is not a parody of womanhood; it is a theory of performance. Dolly got there decades before the mainstream caught up. In 9 to 5 (1980, directed by Colin Higgins, 109 minutes), she is not playing a sex object. She is playing a woman who knows she is being looked at and charges admission. In Steel Magnolias (1989, directed by Herbert Ross, 117 minutes), she is the town beautician, a woman whose job is literally to construct other women’s surfaces. The movie does not treat that as shallow. It treats it as power. Dolly’s career is a long argument that the surface is where the self lives, if you are the one who built it.
Then there is Mary. In an earlier impersonator interview, Dolly sits down with a woman who does a Dolly Parton impersonation. Mary says, plainly, that she has the accent down really well. Dolly asks if she thinks she does a better impersonation than Dolly does. Mary does not hesitate: “I think that my accent’s better.” And Dolly—without breaking, without bristling, without a trace of diva panic—slides into the bit and says, “I think that is Dolly Parton talking to you now. Hi Mary.” It is a tiny moment, maybe thirty seconds of airtime, but it contains the whole thesis. Dolly does not defend her territory. She occupies it more fully. She becomes the impersonator of herself. She out-copies the copy.
That is the art of the copy. Most stars treat impersonators as a threat because they secretly suspect they are replaceable. Dolly treats them as a tribute because she knows she is the source. She is the original and the author. You can put on the wig. You can stuff the bra. You can practice the laugh. But you cannot author the joke if you did not write it. Dolly wrote it. She wrote it in 9 to 5, where she turned a secretary into a revenge fantasy. She wrote it in The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas (1982, also directed by Colin Higgins, 114 minutes), where she made a brothel madam into a moral center. She wrote it in Steel Magnolias, where she walked into a room of actresses and walked out with the biggest heart. The wig is just the cover. She is the book.
