‘Find out who you are, and do it on purpose’: unabashedly herself, Dolly Parton was an icon to LGBTQ fans

Parton’s gift lay in uniting everyone from God-fearing country fans to queer devotees.

The way she saw me when I met her made me feel like a flower turning towards the sun • Alexis Petridis on Dolly Parton’s peerless career that turned country music cliches inside out • Dolly Parton – a life in pictures • Country music legend Dolly Parton dies aged 80 – latest updates • Share your tributes and memories of Dolly Parton In a crowded field, perhaps the gayest thing about me is that I didn’t spend my teenage gap year pilgrimaging to India or Thailand in search of myself.

Instead, I hitch-hiked to Dollywood, Dolly Parton’s theme park in Tennessee.

Even at 19, I suspected that the answers to life’s most pressing questions could be found at the feet of the Dolly Lama.

I was right.

I completed the last leg of my journey with a florist who was running deliveries up the mountain.

One of his customers was a former school friend of Dolly’s, and I took the opportunity to breathlessly enquire whether her classmates had always known that Parton would become a huge star.

“We didn’t, but she did,” she drawled.

Exquisite.

This shining example of self-belief powered me through my early career in magazine writing, until I struck gold four years later when I was flown to Nashville to interview Dolly about her most recent album.

Entering her private rehearsal space, my head was 100% buzzing static and 0% functioning brain.

My sense of impostor syndrome was undimmed when Dolly appeared wearing what looked like three stacked wigs and a pair of fishnet cutoff leggings, assumed an incredulous expression and wheezed: “Are you my interviewer? But you’re a baaaby !” before gripping my waist in her hot pink taloned hands.

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