A few words may be in order on the deaths of two feminist icons, each in a different mode. Dolly Parton died on August 25th and the encomia have been pouring in. A good ol’ southern girl done good. And there is good to say – her philanthropy, her work ethic and her rags-to-riches story; her numerous popular songs, which she wrote for herself and for others; her 50+ years of marriage to Carl Thomas Dean, whose last name she adopted in her private life. Due to her health issues, they could never have children but did give to various charities over the years.
Yet and yet. Dolly Parton had her darker side. She posed for the front cover of Playboy in 1978, dressed up in their iconic ‘bunny suit’. Although she was likely paid a whack load of money, Dolly did not, from what I have read – and thankfully not seen – go the full Monty, I suppose to preserve what modesty she might maintain. But what did her appearance say of the other, often desperate, women in Heffner’s rag, revealed for the eyes of lustful men?
Ironic, as well, that a scant two years later, after appearing in a pornographic magazine that objectifies and degrades women, Dolly starred in the film ‘9 to 5’ (for which she wrote the title hit song) about – you guessed it – the objectification and degradation of women in the workplace. You can’t it both ways.
On that note, Ms. Parton – or Mrs. Dean, as she called herself privately – was also an outspoken advocate for LGBTQ+ ‘rights’, same-sex marriage and Mengelian transgenderism. Did she limit the latter to adults, or did she also believe that prepubescent children should have their bodies carved up in the name of the insane ideology? And what is one to say of the looming downfall of women’s sports, as biological men crush – often literally – their female competition?
Besides Playboy, there’s Dolly’s starring role ‘The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas’, with co-star Burt Reynolds (who himself posed in ‘Playgirl’ twice and did go the full Monty for Cosmopolitan). Sure, it’s a comedy which happens to feature a brothel, but in many ways the film’s palliation of the horrors of prostitution makes it all the worse.
Ms. Parton may have presented a wholesome persona, and she had her gifts, but one wonders what was behind that façade, the thickly layered makeup and signature wig, which, as she admitted, she never went out without. How much of her real self did she hide, even from herself? Those days are over – now all is revealed before God.
Gloria Steinem died a week after Dolly, on September 2nd, at the ripe old age of 92. She was given her four-score and ten and then some, during which she wrought much cultural havoc. Steinem was a proto-feminist of a quite radical variety from her youth, breaking off her engagement to a ‘fine young man’ to gain her ‘freedom’ as a single woman.
Ms. Steinem – she insisted on the ‘Ms.’, an honorific she popularized to hide the marital status of women, as it is for men with their ‘Mr.’ – ended up a columnist for the New Yorker, before founding the eponymous ‘Ms.’. Magazine, through which she propagated her feminist ideology. She was a lifelong advocate for the free and untrammeled right to abortion. When she was 22, Ms. Steinem herself had her unwanted unborn child killed, which was done secretly, since back then in a saner era abortion was still illegal.
Was her misguided zeal motivated by latent unresolved guilt and anger from this primordial act? Was she responding to the all-too-real malaise of the modern suburban housewife, getting through each day supported by ‘mother’s little helper’?
Ms. Steinem never had children, a decision she claimed not to regret, but one does wonder. Such regrets lie deep. She did eventually tie the knot at 66. Needless to say, the union was not procreative, but they stayed faithful to the end.
The ‘freedom’ she offered to the modern woman was far worse than whatever ills there may have been. Legions of women followed and continue to follow Ms. Steinem’s words and example – whether wittingly or not – eschewing the (apparent) drudgery of marriage and family for the (all too real) drudgery of the workforce. Or, perhaps, they give it all up for the chimera of hedonism, sexual licence and ‘finding oneself’. Men have their own part to play in this – the plagues of pornography, drug use, addictive gaming have made too many of them effeminate and listless, incapable of providing for a family and raising children, regardless – or perhaps because – of how buff and manicured their bodies be. But if women stop having and even desiring children – and only they can bear future generations – then there is no future. The consequences are all around us: the disintegration of the family, loneliness, widespread unhappiness and mental illness, along with consequent demographic and civilizational collapse.
Extreme? Perhaps, but as Pope Saint John Paul II put it, as the family goes, so goes society. And if the family goes, so does society.
As I always end such reflections, I do hope and pray that both Mrs. Dolly Dean Parton and Ms. Steinem somehow, in some way, availed themselves of God’s infinite mercy, before that definitive judgement, in which all is made clear.
Kyrie eleison!
