“Dolly Parton’s death may be the last monocultural event of our era,” wrote one of my Substack friends. Yes, Dolly brought us together, “the last great unifier in a divided nation,” as one news outlet put it. Adored by fans across gender, race, class, politics and religion. Name a boundary. Dolly vaulted over it in 6-inch rhinestone heels, leaving in her wake a trail of Grammy-winning songs, hilarious quips and unbridled generosity.
In many ways, Dolly gave us the ultimate selfie. Big boobs, big wigs, fake eyelashes. A giant presence in a 5-foot-nothing body. The artifice was all part of the reality.
“I’ve created this and played it up — the makeup, the whole persona,” she told The New York Times in 2002. She was the author of her own image, one that was unequivocally singular and unabashedly Dolly.
The same day the internet mourned and celebrated Dolly, a bizarre side drama was unfolding. An online ad for Calloway golf depicted a woman being shoved to the ground as the mechanism for a joke about golf clubs.
This got me thinking: So much happens to the female body from the outside. It’s viewed, judged, sexualized, photographed, marketed to, legislated, commented upon—and sometimes physically acted upon.
“So much of womanhood is spent learning to observe ourselves from the outside, as though we are both the person living in our body and the audience watching it,” the actor Kristin Stewart mused recently.
We constantly doubt ourselves: Am I too fat? Too skinny? Is this outfit flattering? Should I wear more makeup or less, work out more or not get too muscular, dye my hair or let it go gray, get Botox or embrace my wrinkles? And on and on and on. And we’re not the only judges. Everyone else seems to have an opinion about what we should or shouldn’t do with our bodies, too. And somehow, through all of this, we’re supposed to emerge completely secure in our own.
It’s like, yes, ladies, by all means, embrace your body and all that it’s capable of. But whatever you do, please don’t talk about all the normal things that happen to it: menstrual cycles, wanting kids, not wanting kids, miscarriages, infertility, perimenopause, menopause, aging, painful sex. La la la, I can’t hear you.
On a bike ride the other day, one of my friends suggested lengthening the route so we could “earn our dinner” at Blind Dog afterward. To be fair, I’ve echoed the same sentiment many times. But would it be so wrong to think of a California roll as fuel for physical activity rather than a reward?
I don’t know if you follow the Olympic rugby medalist Ilona Maher on Instagram, but 5.6 million people do. And it’s not just because of her talents on the pitch. It’s because, like Dolly Parton, she’s someone who seems to be completely at home in her body.
The other day, she posted a reel of herself and two other female rugby players dancing on a beach in tiny bikinis. All three of them were absolutely ripped — huge biceps, thunder thighs, big ol’ buns of steel that jiggled like Jell-O. It wasn’t so much that they were proud of their bodies. It was just that they didn’t seem the least bit concerned with how they were viewed. It was the Insta-equivalent of dance like no one’s watching.
Which begs the question: Do we actually need to wake up every day and think about how good/bad/ugly our bodies are? What if we didn’t feel like we had to be on a lifelong self-improvement quest? I mean, imagine if we didn’t think so much about what our bodies looked like.
Maybe that’s the ultimate freedom. Not trying so hard to love the view from the outside, but getting back inside our bodies.
Suddenly all the things we do here in Park City could take on a whole new meaning. Like, my thighs aren’t something to compare to the woman riding in front of me. They’re the things pushing me up the hill. My arms don’t have to look like this or that. They’re helping me press a set of heavy dumbbells over my head. Food doesn’t have to be a guilty pleasure to be earned only when I’ve worked my butt off. It’s simply the fuel that allows my body to do the things I love.
In a 1977 interview, Barbara Walters told Dolly she was beautiful and she didn’t need the wig and eyelashes and all the rest.
“I don’t like to be like everybody else,” Dolly replied. “I would never stoop so low to be fashionable. That’s the easiest thing in the world to do.”
Dolly and Ilona couldn’t look more different. One all platinum wigs and eyelashes, the other biceps and buns of steel. Neither is a template for what the rest of us should look like, either. And maybe that’s the point.
I’m back on my mountain bike, riding behind one of my friends. I notice her thighs and stop the thought before it even forms. There’s a hill in front of me, and it won’t climb itself.