Goodbye Dolly, my beloved bimbo!

It’s a dark, bleak night on August 25, 2026, when a notification pops up on my phone. Dolly Parton has died, it reads. My first reaction is to type “NO NO NO” – with incredible ease, since I had my acrylic nails removed three days ago – and open Instagram to see what the news outlets are posting. It’s past midnight, and I’m calling my nail lady to book an emergency appointment for acrylics with Dolly’s face on them. “To honor her.”

I then call the person who first introduced me to Dolly, to break the sad news. Every year on her birthday she has a Dolly themed cake with Dolly at the corresponding age. Turning 29? A 29-year-old Dolly Parton featured on the cake. Turning 30? A 30-year-old Dolly. Why would anyone become so obsessed with an artist?

Because Dolly was much more than an artist. She was a legend. Of course, I’m glad we got to know her songs, because they’re incredible, but mostly, I’m glad that through her career we got to know who Dolly Parton, the person, really was.

To begin with, she wrote a song to another woman, a rival, begging her not to take her man while praising her beauty. WHO DOES THAT? Some might consider it a sign of weakness, might even consider her a pushover. Not quite!

When she wrote the absolute masterpiece that is “I Will Always Love You,” Elvis Presley wanted to record it in exchange for 50% of the publishing rights. This was 1974. Dolly was known, but mostly within the confines of the country music world. Her fame hadn’t peaked yet. And here was one of the biggest stars in the world asking to sing her song. But ol’ Doll knew the song was a goldmine, and she wasn’t giving it to him.

It took almost two decades, and Whitney Houston recording it, for the song to become a massive hit and make Dolly a hell of a lot of money for the rest of her life. But it was worth it, and she had the maturity to see that, even though her whole being was jumping for joy when she found out Elvis wanted to sing her song. She knew when to say no. A very smart business move.

A lot of the money she made from her business ventures, from music and from her own theme park, DOLLYWOOD (What. A. Name!), went towards children’s books, scientific research, people affected by natural disasters and scholarships.

I mean, the woman who wrote the anthem “9 to 5,” about how hard it is to earn a living, never forgot what it was like to live on a low income. And she tried to help those who didn’t get to become country pop stars and make millions.

When I started paying closer attention to Dolly Parton, I saw a woman who had written incredible songs and built a massively successful business career while looking unapologetically like a stereotypical bimbo, with her huge blonde barnet, enormously long nails and full-on drag look, and something clicked in me. I realised that, like Dolly, I didn’t have to conform to anyone’s idea of what “serious” should look like in order to do my job and be taken seriously. That’s what so many of us queer people who loved Dolly felt too: the freedom to be flashy without having to justify it.

And honestly, who could challenge Dolly Parton? This is the woman who once said she wrote “I Will Always Love You” and “Jolene” on the same night. She later backtracked a pinch and said, okay, maybe not the exact same night, but definitely pretty close together. A masterclass in marketing, if you ask me. What stuck in everyone’s mind was that they were written on the same night. Dolly was a genius. For all the genuinely great things she did, she also knew when to add a little spice, a little drama, just for the flair and fun of it.

Another example comes from a clip that’s been making the rounds over the past few hours, in which Dolly tells Jimmy Fallon that in the credits for “9 to 5,” she credited her own nails, “Nails By: Dolly Parton,” because she tapped them along to the tune while recording the song. When I tell you I’ve scoured the whole wide web trying to find where on earth that credit appears on the record, and found absolutely nothing. I don’t even care anymore if it’s true. I just appreciate that she said it was. Maybe that credit was never really there at all.

Then again, maybe I didn’t actually wake up my nail lady at the stroke of midnight to book an appointment for Dolly Parton nails.

Goodbye, Dolly. Thank you for teaching me to be unapologetically blonde, with the nails to match, even in the most serious of rooms.