Dolly Parton liked to tell a story about the time she entered a Dolly Parton lookalike contest at a West Hollywood gay bar. “Me and a bunch of friends decided we’d go down there,” she recalled on a talk show in 2017. “They had these big drag queens, they looked great, prettier than I could ever dream of being. When they walked across the stage… whoever got the most applause won the contest. Here I come walking across the stage, and I got the least applause! So I always say, it’s terrible when [you’re Dolly Parton and you] lose a Dolly Parton lookalike contest!”
The Queen of Country’s death at the age of 80 has been announced by her family, sparking a global outpouring of grief. While she may have had a look that was easy to replicate, she was unquestionably one of a kind. A sharecropper’s daughter born in a two-room log cabin in rural Tennessee, her songwriting savvy and shrewd mind for business made her wealthy beyond her wildest dreams, with an estimated net worth of $500 million.
One of the most famous musicians on the planet, she was beloved across political and social divides: a self-made country music star and committed Christian who never forgot her Southern roots while championing LGBTQ rights, pouring money into childhood literacy programs and helping to fund a Covid vaccine.
Growing up “dirt poor” as the fourth of 12 children, Parton started singing in the local church at the age of six but later said she modeled her iconic look after “the town tramp”, despite the protestations of her father and a beating from her grandfather, a preacher.
“I didn’t know what she was, just this woman who was blond and piled her hair up, wore high heels and tight skirts, and, boy, she was the prettiest thing I’d ever seen,” Parton recalled. “Momma used to say, ‘Aw, she’s just trash,’ and I thought, ‘That’s what I want to be when I grow up. Trash.’” She maintained her larger-than-life image until her death, often quipping: “It takes a lot of money to look this cheap.”
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