She not only declares “my mistakes are no worse than yours just because I’m a woman,” but also asks him to “think of all the shame you might have brought somebody else.” Dolly’s argument is not a plea for forgiveness or absolution. Dolly said this broke his heart, but she thought, “Well, my goodness, what’s the big damn deal?” In her classic country song, Dolly gently but firmly confronts her man about his hypocrisy. To illustrate, let’s take a look at a couple of songs.ĭolly has stated she wrote “Just Because I’m a Woman” (1968) in response to her husband’s reaction when she told him she’d had sex with someone else before she married him. Her ability to bridge the stark divides in the United States was the center of the award-winning WNYC podcast “Dolly Parton’s America.” As I write in my book, Dolly’s fans include people of all faiths, classes, gender, sexual, racial, ethnic, and political identities, and at her concerts they all “happily co-exist in their communal focus on Dolly.” Dolly’s appeal across many demographics is the result of her bubbling optimism, her insistence that she loves everyone without judgment, and her refusal to wade into political waters.įor example, in 1978, when a Playboy magazine interviewer asked Dolly if she supported the Equal Rights Amendment, she deflected the question: “Equal rights? I love everybody.” Rather than making political statements, Dolly uses her songs about women, like “Eagle When She Flies,” “Just Because I’m a Woman,” and “When Possession Gets Too Strong,” to express what she values in relationships and what she thinks about situations and systems of injustice regarding women’s lives. Saying that she has fans on all points of the political continuum, Dolly’s goal is to avoid offending or alienating anyone. Throughout her career Dolly has made a point never to speak about politics, and she usually sidesteps political questions with a good-natured, self-deprecating wisecrack. Do we think our little white asses are the only ones that matter? No!” The fact that Dolly made this statement was notable since it ran counter to her familiar assertion: “I am not political, and I refuse to get caught up in political things.” In a prominent interview for Billboard, she spoke about the Black Lives Matter movement saying, “Of course Black lives matter. This is not unusual, but the headlines were a bit bigger this time because, unlike her usual practice, Dolly had made a political statement. In mid-August 2020, Dolly Parton was in the news.