“I’ve been obsessed with Dolly since I was a kid,” says her pal Tori Ayers, who as soon as dressed up as Dolly for biography day at her elementary faculty, with socks stuffed inside a sequined costume. Her outfit tonight is extra low-key, a Dolly T-shirt and the black fringe skirt she wore to a Taylor Swift live performance. “So many people DM’ed me about this event, and I’m like, yes, I know!”
The emergence of Dolly Parton, ‘80s punchline, into a 21st-century feminist hero is a twist of pop culture perhaps best captured by the 2019 podcast “ Dolly Parton’s America.” Created by “Radiolab’s” Jad Abumrad, the nine-part collection positions Parton as that uncommon artist capable of bridge a partisan divide, queer-friendly sufficient for liberals and countrified sufficient for conservatives. She’s additionally one hell of a songwriter, a proto-Taylor Swift who has penned hundreds of songs, together with the chart-topping juggernaut, “I Will Always Love You.”
“Why would someone not like Dolly? She has the kindest way of putting someone in their place, and she looks fabulous doing it,” says Vivienne Vermuth, the night’s official Dolly Parton impersonator. Vermuth slinks across the rambling patio and heated indoor house in a spangly purple costume and a towering platinum-blond wig. “This is 1982 Grand Ole Opry era, my favorite,” she says, gesturing to her outfit.
Like Greta Gerwig’s “Barbie,” Parton offers girls a method to enjoy hyper-feminine trappings with out feeling confined by them. It’s as if the prickly dilemmas of second-wave feminism — cosmetic surgery, make-up, intercourse enchantment — have resolved in a chirpy all-embracing maternal emblem of you-do-you.