The History Behind Recently Deceased Feminist Icons and Their Selective Activism

Dolly Parton wore her sleeves and pants flared, her jumpsuits bedazzled, and her tops cut low. She strutted in towering heels, applied makeup with a heavy hand, and piled her hair high. At five feet tall, she embodied a larger-than-life persona, crafting her identity and brand around excess. 

Gloria Steinem, with her signature aviator glasses and penchant for black clothing, fell on the other end of the spectrum. Where Dolly projected abundance, Gloria endorsed restraint. Where Dolly was extravagant, Gloria was understated. On the surface, they couldn’t be more different. But when the face of the women’s movement passed just a week after the Queen of Country, the losses reverberated off each other. 

In her lifetime of activism, Gloria Steinem championed the pro-choice movement, led the feminist magazine Ms., and founded numerous organizations to uplift women in politics, media, and activism. For many women of the era, Steinem defined feminism. But it was Dolly who showed them what it could really look like. Always unapologetically flamboyant, her style (modeled after the “town tramp”) used traditionally devalued hyperfemininity to her advantage. In her music, she spoke of issues like reproductive justice, gender-based double standards, and stereotypes of women. Furthermore, in 1987, Parton was named one of the Ms. Women of the Year. Steinem herself wrote the profile, saying: “If feminism means each of us finding our unique power, and helping other women do the same, Dolly Parton certainly has done both.” 

But while Steinem could proclaim feminism as a force for women to empower each other within the comfort and security of print, she hadn’t always lived up to that in her actions. Prior to becoming the feminist icon that many know her as, Steinem allied herself with the very organization responsible for the illegal and coordinated surveillance of Black and women’s liberation movements. Between 1958 and 1962, she founded and directed the Independent Research Service, a covert Central Intelligence Agency (CIA)-funded project which recruited unknowing American students to distribute propaganda and collect intelligence at Soviet-sponsored World Youth Festivals. Though she stepped down from the organization after four years (remaining on the board until the funding source was revealed to the world), Steinem was later accused of collaborating with the CIA through Ms. (Lawyers for Steinem prevented print publication of the expose, which claimed that the publication diverted feminist energy away from class-based radicalism and toward institutional liberalism).

Steinem represented and championed a version of activism that uplifted many while never straying from the country’s institutions or stepping too far out of line. In that, she wasn’t so far from Parton. Dolly Parton, an avid philanthropist and activist, stood up for the LGBTQ community in her speech, music, and actions, continuously supporting marriage equality and transgender rights for decades. In the same modes, she unequivocally supported the U.S. military. She visited U.S. troops during the Gulf War, released a patriotic album during the Iraq War, lent her likeness to a warplane, and co-hosted a show with former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld for a 2005 radio collaboration with the Department of Defense. 

It’s worth noting that Parton was not a politician nor a movement leader. She was a performer who chose to use her platform to uplift the people, places, and causes she supported, including her home county of Sevier in Tennessee. This upbringing influenced not only her work to improve education and job opportunities, but also her involvement with the military. Likely rooted in the propaganda baked into American—and especially Southern—culture, Parton’s military support was focused more on the (mostly working-class) servicemen than the military as an apparatus of empire building. 

The conversation around Steinem’s, and to a much lesser extent Parton’s, involvement with American institutions of colonialism brings up the ever-recurring question: Should complicated histories negate one’s legacy of virtuous work? 

While each case (even beyond Steinem and Parton) is different, the question boils down to an issue with hero worship. When we put people on pedestals, there is no room for imperfection or nuance. Their lives and histories become all or nothing, and we lose the ability to appreciate someone’s accomplishments without crowning them a saint. It’s a tendency that is ultimately incompatible with human consumption, life, and the world, and one that does a disservice both to the audience and the individual.

Alexandra Lee is a member of the class of 2029 and can be reached at ahlee@wesleyan.edu.