Growing up in Tennessee, I could hardly walk into a grocery store without hearing “Jolene” playing on the radio. My mom sang fragments of “9 to 5” as she cooked Hamburger Helper on school nights, after clocking out of work. At my babysitter’s house in the summer, where Country Music Television was our ambient noise, she’d shout, “Good golly, Miss Dolly!” every time a Dolly song came on (which was at least every 30 minutes). Dolly Parton was more of an institution than a star to Tennesseans. Her image was plastered on T-shirts and hung on walls, like Mother Mary would be in a Catholic home. We vacationed at her amusement park, Dollywood, every school break. No one ever used her last name—she was simply Dolly to us all, and she was living proof that tough odds were no match for a cup of ambition.When Dolly’s death was announced yesterday afternoon, my phone lit up with texts from hometown friends. “It feels like a member of our family died in Tennessee today,” one friend said. My socialist sister said Tennessee’s poet laureate had left us. My Donald Trump–voting father cried. In Tennessee, whether you fly a MAGA flag or a Pride flag, one thing is for sure: You’re listening to Dolly.Dolly mattered to southerners for so many reasons, but perhaps most of all for her origin story, which she called a “rags to rhinestones” tale. She grew up four hours east of me, in a one-room cabin with her 11 siblings, in the depths of Tennessee Appalachia. Unlike Nashville, which is so associated with Dolly today, the Appalachian region of Tennessee is riddled with evidence of isolation in its language, economy, and general sense of yearning. Appalachia has its own distinct dialect and a deep tradition of oral storytelling. Being able to captivate an audience served as capital, and she brought this generationally reinforced skill to songwriting and the stage. Her upbringing was one of poverty and stripped-down performance. Like many other Tennessee families, the Parton family sang church hymns and mountain ballads on front-porch swings. In her hit song “Coat of Many Colors,” Dolly recalls a coat her mother made for her of donated scrap fabric. “Although we had no money, I was rich as I could be / In my coat of many colors my mama made for me.” She was proud of and honest about her roots, and for many poor southerners, it was the first time they saw their stories told publicly.[Read: We’re living in the world Dolly Parton built]Dolly was first introduced on the Grand Ole Opry stage at age 13 by Johnny Cash, who called her “a little girl here from up in East Tennessee.” She would never shed that identity. A number of global superstars got their start in the South, including Taylor Swift and Dolly’s own goddaughter, Miley Cyrus. Most ditched their southern dialect and opted for a more conventional pop sound after reaching the height of their fame. But Dolly never evolved. Her famous mantra, “Find out who you are and do it on purpose,” explained the way she viewed the world. She was unapologetically southern, and at the same time, nobody’s fool. “Dolly’s accent, like her music, held the notes of her East Tennessee home, and she often spoke proudly of her choice to carry it,” Amy Clark, a linguist from Appalachia, told me. “She sounded just like many of us in the way she said ‘light’ or dropped ‘g’ off certain words.” Her refusal to abandon her southern way of speaking meant the world to people from such places. “If you were from Appalachia and couldn’t carry a note, you could still be proud because you sounded like Dolly,” Clark said.John Seakwood / Disney General Entertainment Content via GettyDollywood, Dolly Parton in 1987.Many stars who have left (or, in their view, escaped) the South speak of their upbringing as a past life rarely revisited. Dolly, conversely, spent her entire life giving back to her home state. “She understood that where you come from isn’t something you transcend,” Brooke Griffith, a jewelry-shop owner from East Tennessee, wrote on Instagram. “It’s something you can honor by creating opportunities for the people who come after you.” And Dolly did just that, most famously by opening Dollywood in 1986. It’s the largest employer in Sevier County, where she grew up. After Whitney Houston popularized her song “I Will Always Love You,” Dolly invested the royalties she earned into a big office complex and strip mall in a predominantly Black Nashville neighborhood. She called it “the house that Whitney built,” and mentioned it only when asked about it.When Dolly’s identity didn’t match the plans pop culture had for her, she chose her roots, and was rewarded every time. Even her look was defiantly southern. A 1991 issue of Vanity Fair described Dolly as “every down-home virtue wrapped up in a sizzling blonde bombshell.” That’s the thing that drew me to Dolly all those years ago—she seemed to be the only woman in the South who could present as so sexy and be read as so wholesome. Most women who wore Daisy Dukes were whispered about in church pews and grocery lines, but Dolly wasn’t just loved in spite of it; she was lauded for it. Her self-described “Backwoods Barbie” persona, also the name of one of her songs, inspired generations of women who might be cast out as trailer trash to lean into their interpretation of beauty. “So read into it what you will, but see me as I am / The way I look is just a country girl’s idea of glam,” the song goes. She drew her aesthetic inspiration from a woman she’d seen as a kid when her family went into town. “There was this woman that was the town-trash whore, they called her, but I thought she was beautiful,” Dolly told Ellen DeGeneres once. She described the woman’s look in a way that many would describe Dolly’s—blond hair piled on her head, red nails, tall heels. “I just thought she was the prettiest thing I’d ever seen. And I used to say to my mama, ‘Oh, she’s so pretty.’ Mama’d say, ‘Oh, she’s just trash.’ And I thought to myself, That’s what I want to be when I grow up—just trash!” she said. “Most country girls—that’s the way you think you’re supposed to look, as plain as we were. We had nothing.”I remember finding that exact same kind of woman the most beautiful. To be buxom and blond with a well-painted face was many southern girls’ dream, and we saw it embodied in Dolly, who never apologized for her presentation. She paired pageant glam with a Walmart push-up bra. She was equal parts Bible verses and witty comebacks. She was whiskey in a teacup, and to a little Southern Baptist with an affinity for lipstick and boundary-pushing, she was proof that one could love both God and dime-store glamour.Dolly showed us southern girls that you didn’t have to sacrifice femininity to be taken seriously. In my own life, she’s empowered me to keep my humor and silliness, even in spaces where that’s not the norm. She taught a generation of young southern women that there’s nothing more powerful than to be underestimated; you should never correct someone who thinks you’re dumb, because that just means they’ll see you as harmless and let you into any room. And that’s when you get to kindly prove them wrong. No one better embodied the warmth and sheer grit of a southern woman.William DeShazer / The New York Times / ReduxA young fan poses with a large photo of Dolly Parton, from the movie "9 to 5", at Belmont University's Fisher Center in Nashville, Tennessee, July 18, 2025.To be a female country artist who reached the heights that Dolly did was not only rare but absolutely unprecedented. Dolly made sure to bring classic country music to new audiences. She was the ultimate collaborator. With more than 100 collaborations throughout her career, she partnered with the giants of other genres, including Paul McCartney, Pitbull, Beyoncé, Norah Jones, Post Malone, and Sabrina Carpenter. Her two Trio albums with Linda Ronstadt and Emmylou Harris showed what could happen when three titans of the country, Americana, and rock industries combined forces. She always kept her country Dolly flair no matter the style of the collaboration. This helped new audiences recognize the beauty in traditional country music, while introducing her older fan base to other genres previously foreign to them. So much of the country-music craze we see today can be attributed to Dolly’s presence across different types of music.But Dolly’s influence went well beyond representation in the media; Dolly’s Imagination Library has changed the lives of millions of young children, including my own two nieces. Founded in 1995 with her father, who was illiterate, the program provides free books to kids from birth to age 5, regardless of their income. Participants in pre-K also receive a free year pass to Dollywood, which my youngest niece used just last month when we visited. Today the organization gives millions of books monthly to children around the world.My best friend from high school was a lower-income kid who, like so many others, was introduced to reading by the Imagination Library. Her mother got pregnant with her when she was 22. She was enrolled in a federal food-aid program and remembers splitting kids’ meals at McDonald’s with her daughter in her daughter’s early years. “I didn’t have my shit together when I had her,” she told me. “But my baby got a book once a month until she went to kindergarten. Even though books weren’t something I could afford, I got to read to her.” She compared Dolly’s passing to the day she found out Princess Diana had died.[Read: The transcendence of Dolly Parton]No southerner, or perhaps human, has remained so universally beloved for so long. In a March poll of Americans’ opinions about international figures, Dolly ranked No. 1 by a long shot, with her two nearest contenders, Barack Obama and Volodymyr Zelensky, falling behind her by more than 50 percentage points. Only 5 percent of the Americans polled said they had an unfavorable opinion of Dolly.Her universal likability, particularly in the South, could be attributed to all sorts of factors. Maybe it was because, once she did make it big, she paid it forward and gave back to the communities that had built her up. Maybe it was because she avoided talking politics, so everyone could assume she was secretly on their side (she did, however, stand openly with the LGBTQ community, and she created overtly feminist music). Maybe it was because she grew up poor with no connections and made it anyway, embodying an American dream that so many of us have given up on. Our ubiquitous love for Dolly is proof that we still want to root for that dream, especially in a place like Tennessee.A.M. Stewart / AFP / GettyFlowers and notes placed by fans are seen around the bronze statue of late singer-songwriter Dolly Parton outside the Sevier County Courthouse in downtown Sevierville, Tennessee on August 25, 2026.When I walked into Dollywood with my nieces for their first time last month, I got to watch two little Tennesseans fall in love with Dolly the way I did around their age. But she was no stranger to them—they were already good friends by that point. She had sent them books and special birthday messages since they were babies, she had given my youngest niece a ticket to the park, and both girls had read all about her life. “Dolly loves butterflies—that’s why they’re everywhere,” my 7-year-old niece informed me as we walked past the choo choo train. “She’s just so fancy,” my 5-year-old niece declared as we admired her old dresses. For two girls from a Tennessee town with a poverty rate twice that of the national one, Dolly serves as a beacon of what’s possible.We didn’t know then that it’d be the last time we’d see the place when it wasn’t a memorial—and what an absurdly magical place it is. Who else could get away with naming an entire amusement park after themselves while they’re still alive? Only a saint like Dolly. God rest her soul.Illustration sources: Andrew Putler / Redferns / Getty; olhahladiy / Getty; MirageC / Getty.