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Since Dolly Parton’s passing, I’ve been seeing people talk about the similarities between her and Cardi B.
At first, I thought it was just one of those internet observations.
Then I started thinking about it.
And I actually see it.
Obviously, these are two very different women from different generations, backgrounds and genres of music.
But there is something there.
It’s an aura.
They’re both unapologetically who they are. They’re both very tapped into their sexuality and femininity. Neither one seems interested in pretending she doesn’t know she’s being looked at.
And as someone who works in the adult industry, that energy feels familiar to me.
The Dolly connection goes deeper than I realized
Before looking into Dolly’s history more, I knew the obvious things.
The big hair. The cleavage. The nails. The tight clothes. The heels. The dramatic femininity.
What I didn’t realize was that part of that image came directly from a woman Dolly saw growing up whom everyone in town called the “town tramp.”
Dolly has told this story repeatedly.
The woman wore red lipstick, red nails, high heels and tight clothes. She had bleached blond hair. Other adults described her as trash.
Dolly thought she was beautiful.
She eventually used that woman as part of the inspiration for the image that became unmistakably Dolly Parton.
That immediately got my attention.
Because that’s an aesthetic women in the adult industry know very well.
Not because every adult entertainer looks like Dolly Parton. We don’t.
But think about what society has historically coded as “too much.”
Too much hair.
Too much makeup.
Too much cleavage.
Too tight.
Too many rhinestones.
Too long of a nail.
Too high of a heel.
Too interested in being sexy.
There has always been a line between the kind of femininity society celebrates and the kind it decides is cheap, trashy, inappropriate or overly sexual.
Dolly built a career standing right on top of that line.
And she never toned herself down enough to become respectable.
People simply had to expand their idea of what a respectable woman could look like.
Cardi never erased the stripper either
That’s another reason I understand the comparison.
Cardi B didn’t become famous and then pretend her life started when the mainstream discovered her.
She has talked openly about stripping and what it did for her life.
She began dancing at 19 and has talked about how stripping changed her life because she became focused on making money.
And that history didn’t completely disappear from her presentation when she became a rapper.
The nails stayed.
The breasts stayed.
The wigs stayed.
The sexuality stayed.
The loudness stayed.
The humor stayed.
Cardi entered mainstream spaces as Cardi.
There is a difference between becoming successful after being a stripper and becoming successful while refusing to behave as though being a stripper is something your new audience needs you to apologize for.
And Dolly did something similar decades before her in a completely different cultural world.
The image makes people underestimate the woman
This may be one of the strongest things they have in common.
Dolly’s image made people underestimate her.
She knew it.
And she used it.
You saw the breasts.
The blond wig.
The rhinestones.
The nails.
Maybe you thought you understood her.
Meanwhile, she was writing songs, protecting her publishing rights, building businesses and turning herself into one of the most recognizable entertainers in American culture.
Even her acrylic nails became part of the art. She used them to help create the rhythmic sound while writing “9 to 5.”
There’s something almost perfect about that.
The thing someone might dismiss as frivolous literally became an instrument.
Cardi gets underestimated for a lot of the same reasons
With Cardi, the language changes.
Stripper.
Reality star.
Loud.
Raunchy.
Too sexual.
Too much.
But again, the assumption underneath it feels familiar.
If a woman is highly sexual, extremely feminine, funny, dramatic or comfortable with being looked at, people can assume there can’t possibly be much underneath it.
Sexuality gets treated like evidence against intelligence.
Femininity gets treated like evidence against seriousness.
That’s something I recognize very well from the adult industry.
And it’s also why I think people underestimate how calculated a persona can be.
Sometimes the hair is part of the business.
The nails are part of the business.
The walk is part of the business.
The clothes are part of the business.
The voice is part of the business.
The ability to walk into a room and make people turn around is part of the business.
That’s performance.
Women being openly sexual still makes people uncomfortable
Cardi and Megan Thee Stallion’s “WAP” is probably one of the clearest modern examples.
The song created a national argument over female sexuality.
Critics called it vulgar and degrading. Other people saw something different: two women speaking openly about their own sexual pleasure in a genre where men had been allowed to do the equivalent for decades.
And there’s another little connection here that I find fascinating.
“WAP” samples Frank Ski’s “Whores in This House.”
Again, somewhere underneath mainstream entertainment, we find imagery and language associated with women society traditionally pushed to the margins.
The aesthetic becomes fashion.
Stripper movement becomes choreography.
Lingerie becomes stagewear.
Long acrylic nails become mainstream beauty.
The woman who was supposedly too sexual becomes the blueprint.
Dolly experienced another version of the same contradiction
Dolly’s presentation was sexual.
She knew that.
Everybody else knew it too.
She was comfortable making jokes about it and refused to change herself simply because other people found the look excessive.
And yet she became one of those rare entertainers almost everybody seemed to love.
Women loved Dolly.
Men loved Dolly.
Country fans loved Dolly.
Queer audiences loved Dolly.
People who might judge another woman for dressing exactly like her could still love Dolly.
That’s fascinating to me.
Because somehow Dolly made people confront a contradiction without necessarily announcing that she was doing it.
You could have the enormous breasts.
The tight clothes.
The blond wig.
The red nails.
The sexual jokes.
And still be kind.
Still be smart.
Still be talented.
Still be generous.
Still be someone people respected.
Perhaps the stereotype was the problem.
Not the woman.
But there’s another part of this connection that I haven’t seen people talking about.
And it’s the part I recognize because I work in the adult industry.
There’s an aura that can develop when you become comfortable with being seen, with your body, with your femininity and with your sexual energy.
I’ve felt it happen in myself.
I’ve seen it in my colleagues.
And I’ve seen it in women who have never worked a day in this industry.
So what exactly is that aura?
And can you tap into it yourself?
There is an aura, and I know it when I feel it
This is the part of the Cardi and Dolly conversation that I don’t think I could have written the same way before working in the adult industry…
