Dolly Parton: "My chest is a massive distraction weapon"
«S'il fallait que je me décrive moi-même à quelqu’un qui ne m’a jamais vue, je dirais : “Du calme, n’ayez pas peur, c’est juste moi. Je sais que mon apparence est totalement bizarre et superficielle, mais, à l’intérieur, je suis parfaitement authentique.”»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»» À 75 ans, la star de musique country Dolly Partonn’a rien perdu de son talent pour l’autodérision. Elle sait bien que son physique de poupée gonflable - prothèses mammaires en suspens sur une taille de guêpe, panoplie de perruques blondes, maquillage outré sur Botox - invite à la raillerie. Elle n’en a cure. «Rira bien qui rira le dernier»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»» est sa devise. Comme le précise Jane Fonda, fan inconditionnelle depuis le tournage en 1980 du film Comment se débarrasser de son patron (9 to 5,en anglais), où les deux femmes interprètent des secrétaires : «Sous-estimez Dolly à vos dépens. Elle est absolument brillante.»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»
To the famous journalist Barbara Walters who launches him one day: "You are a beautiful woman, you do not have to use all these artifices", Dolly Parton retorts without dismantling, angelic smile: "That's right, it's a choice.I don't like being like everyone.I would never lower myself to follow fashion.It’s far too simple!No, I chose a look to at least attract attention.Once people have returned from the shock caused by my ridiculous appearance, they understand that there are sides of me that they can appreciate."But sometimes do you feel like some of some people?", Insists Barbara Walters."Oh, I know they are making fun of me.But I know exactly what I do, and then I have the power to change at any time if I want to.»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»
Those who try, to pay his head, to trap Dolly Parton, inevitably break their teeth on his stripping humor.His departure, full of mind, are legendary.While Oprah Winfrey tries, during a program, to push her into her entrenchments to disarray her, Dolly launches laughing: "What do you want, I am a fair animal that needs continuous maintenance.I like to say that my chest is a massive distraction weapon.»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»
Body like armor
The message is clear: "My physiognomy is my problem. J’en dispose à ma guise»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»», répète-t-elle à longueur d’interviews.Every morning, the singer selects her outfit and makes her armor.The wigs serve him to avoid the application on his scalp of the harmful chemicals contained in the dyes and the permanent.No one would have seen her naturally.Not even Jane Fonda, who has stayed in her house in Tennessee.
It is true that a priori the clownesque aspect of Dolly Parton is disconcerting.He can even suffocate in the egg the desire to know more about this exceptional woman.Prolific parolier with enormous talent, she composed more than 3,000 songs, the most famous of which, I Will Always Love You (often wrongly attributed to Whitney Houston), has become a classic. Contrairement à ce qu’on croit souvent, cette chanson n’est pas une ode à l’amour mais une «lettre»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»» de démission écrite en 1974 pour son employeur de l’époque, le chanteur de country Porter Wagoner, qui lui a donné sa chance sept ans plus tôt dans son émission télévisée, a fait d’elle une star et dont elle cherche désespérément à se séparer pour faire cavalier seul. «Porter refusait de comprendre, alors, un soir, j’ai composé cette chanson qui était la seule façon de me faire écouter de lui»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»», expliquera-t-elle.
Solo, Dolly Parton is a huge success.In a career of almost fifty years, she sold more than 100 million albums and amassed a fortune of $ 350 million.Despite everything, she continues to be a girl from the Smoky Mountains of Tennessee, where she grew up in the midst of eleven brothers and sisters in a rudimentary chalet.A poor but wonderful childhood, even idyllic, spent in the middle of musicians amateurs of Bluegrass (style of country music, editor's note) which she speaks with a remarkable poetry: "If I close my eyes, I see the mist on the summits, the MerlesBlues on the fence stakes, the meadows where the purple iron wood (Iron Wood, or Olneya Tesota, a local plant, editor's note) and the wild margueres.I like to joke saying that we had two rooms and running water ... at least if you were ready to run to get it.»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»
In winter, the children of the country make ice cream by mixing snow, vanilla, milk and sugar. Pour divertir son entourage, Dolly compose des ballades qu’elle chante au «micro»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»» d’une boîte de conserve fixée sur une badine.Convinced of his talent, an uncle offers him an old guitar, teach him the basics.At 10 years old, she appeared in public for the first time in a local television program, the Walker Show case.She then knows that she will one day shine like a star, whatever her classmates think of it, who said at that time that she was the student "less likely to succeed in life"»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»». «Rira bien qui rira le dernier»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»…
Saint Dolly?
Dolly Parton has become an icon.Both sure of herself and full of humility, kind, accessible ... Almost a saint in the eyes of her fans, because she gives a lot of herself.We no longer count his charitable works.
One of them, the Library imagination (the Library of the Imagination), launched in its Natal County of Sevier in 1995, consists in distributing a free book per month to each child at schoolpublic."This is the work I am most proud of," she said.My father, like many family members, was illiterate.They did not have access to education.It was mountain people who had to work early.Fortunately, he lived long enough to see the success of the program.»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»"A success so great that the Library imagination is soon extended to the state, then to the country, and finally to the English -speaking world.One hundred million pounds have been distributed.Having become high school students, the child's children have benefited since 1988 from the Dollywood Foundation Buddy Program, who encourages them to continue their studies to the bac by rewarding them with a check for 500 dollars if they succeed.
Dolly Parton alone is responsible for a 6 % drop in the abandonment rate of secondary studies.Another program, Mypeople, has made it possible to collect nearly $ 9 million divided between the victims of the poorest fires.More recently, she participated in the financing of research and the development of the Moderna vaccine via a donation of $ 1 million.This effort was followed by a video of his own vaccination, accompanied by a pro-Vaccin sermon hoping to serve as an example "cowards that are afraid of a bite"»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»».In the ultra-conservative South Pro-Trump and Anti-Vaccin, this position was considered very courageous.
Intrepid and committed, Dolly Parton has always defended himself from being, preferring to be carrying any label and not offending anyone, in particular his fans, even if they are now recruited in all strata of thesociety, all ages, all sexes.Her songs speak for her.Simple ballads, sung with an innocent air, in an acute and nasal voice, but which, nevertheless, deliver a powerful message, unequivocal.
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In love and feminist before the hour
In the 1960s, three songs made Dolly Parton a feminist before the hour: Just because I am a Womandennonce sex inequality;Dumb Blond insists that she is not the turkey of anyone, and especially not a man;The Bridge addresses the serious subject of an unwanted pregnancy in adolescence.Subjects not only taboo for the time but very bold for a country singer, a musical genre born in the reactionary south, mainly populated by men little willing to share power with a woman.And yet, when the feminist movement tries to coopte Dolly, she refuses, with her usual note of humor.Interviewed on television, she is doing with one of these pirouettes of which she has the secret: "When the female liberation movement was launched, I said that I was the first to burn my bra andthat the firefighters needed three days to turn it off.»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»In 1980, the song from the film 9 to 5, which it demanded to compose, this time attacks sexual harassment.
If she seems to be rebuilt against a feminism that she has also always practiced in her private or professional life, it is that Dolly Parton does not want to demonize the opposite sex."I know men, I grew up with them, between my brothers, my father and my uncles. Et au final, j’ai connu plus d’hommes bons que de mauvais»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»», déclare-t-elle.Her husband, Carl Dean, met in an automatic laundromat the same day of his arrival in Nashville, in 1966, when she was barely 18 years old, is such a mystery that, for years, the public wondered'there really existed.No one or almost has ever met this businessman specializing in asphalt who hates being under the spotlight.The couple has no children."I believe that God wanted so so that all children can also be mine, that I can devote myself to works like the Library imagination, because if I had not enjoyed the freedom to work, Icould never have done everything I did.»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»
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But Carl and Dolly have been spinning perfect love for almost fifty years.Because they were able to preserve their intimacy and allow Dolly to devote himself to what is close to his heart: to do, the air of nothing, to spend messages, bring his stone to the building.So that a course in the Knoxville Campus Department of the University of Tennessee is dedicated to him.Her name ?Dolly Parton’s America.His goal ?"Give students the opportunity to explore the cultural and historical impact of this country music legend.»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»
