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We are Alyssa and Bri, two sisters who believe God wants more for women than we've been taught. Join us as we dive into the intersection of faith and feminism, learning together as we go.
To the We Are More Pod cast. My name is Alyssa. And my name is Bree. We're two sisters passionate about all things faith and feminism. We believe that Jesus trusted, respected, and encouraged women to teach and preach his word.
Speaker 1:And apparently, that's controversial. Get comfy.
Speaker 2:Hello, world. Good day and good night.
Speaker 1:Good night.
Speaker 2:We don't want them to go to sleep yet. I mean, if you need to listen to us to drift off into the abyss, you can. You can.
Speaker 1:Sure. Breeze come up with a new form of ASMR if that's what
Speaker 2:you listen to to go to sleep. It hurts my throat. Okay. Before Liz and I start recording, we make a lot of weird sounds into the microphones. You know, to test the voices and such.
Speaker 2:Or I guess I do. It's mostly you. Yeah. Because I think it's fun to listen to myself through the headphones.
Speaker 1:It's less fun through my headphones.
Speaker 2:So sometimes it's ASMR y stuff, like tapping or like whispers. But today was
Speaker 1:Alright. Alright. They've all turned us off now. There's only one person still listening. It was not a good time.
Speaker 1:I doubt it was a
Speaker 2:good time through your headphones. I'm so sorry. Do other 30 year old people have as much fun sounding like a goblin as I do? Probably not. Like, are people out there just having fun anymore?
Speaker 2:I don't think they are.
Speaker 1:I don't think all sad. I look at a lot of people in life because Brie and I will always say that we have young energies. Because people will always tell us, oh, there's no way you're in your thirties. But I don't necessarily think it's our looks because boy oh boy, do we have a lot of gray hair.
Speaker 2:Oh my gosh. And several wrinkles between us. Yeah.
Speaker 1:I think it's that we have a very young energy. And so when people interact with us, as Brie's coworker said, they feel drunk.
Speaker 2:That's true. And I'm immature as well. No. Because No. You say duty, I'm gonna laugh.
Speaker 2:I'm I was about to laugh.
Speaker 1:I held it in though.
Speaker 2:Duty. But
Speaker 1:sometimes you just have to take life less seriously. Because I watch a lot of the news, which I don't recommend for your mental health. Yeah. You should stop. And if you took every moment of life as seriously as you have to sometimes, I just don't know what the point would be.
Speaker 2:It's like the people who constantly watch Fox News. How exhausting.
Speaker 1:Exhausting. I just to me and Brie and I will go on all kinds of adventures. That's something that since my daughter was little, we've called just general outings is adventures. Because it made life a little more exciting. And we will drive forty five minutes to get a good donut.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:But it's it's an adventure. Yeah. It's something. It's something. And it's a really good donut.
Speaker 1:And you can't just work and come home and go to sleep. You have to have an adventure.
Speaker 2:That will send you into a depression like you've never seen before. Mhmm. If that's all life is, nothing is good about life anymore, what's the point? What do you have to look forward to? Yeah.
Speaker 2:And sometimes it's a donut. Sometimes it's a donut.
Speaker 1:I think that's where we get life wrong a lot of times. And this launches us actually beautifully into our topic for the day, which is not the topic we said we were gonna do. But I think we want all the good things in life to be big things. Like, okay, I'm gonna look forward to vacation. I'm gonna
Speaker 2:look forward to when we
Speaker 1:go to Disney. And I do. Don't get me wrong. But you also have to have day to day little things to look forward to. You also have to have a person to do those things with.
Speaker 1:Because I probably would sit in my house a whole bunch more if Brie wasn't saying, let's drive forty minutes to get a donut.
Speaker 2:It does help to have an instigator. Not that you can't do those good things and fun things on your own. Mhmm. I encourage you to go to a movie on your own. Or drive to the beach by yourself.
Speaker 2:It's good to be able to be by yourself, but it also really does help Mhmm. To have a person by your side who is willing to do the stupid things with you. Because it's a lot easier to be stupid with someone else. It is. It's hard I
Speaker 1:mean, be look at world. Well, that's not true.
Speaker 2:There's a lot of stupid people all on their own.
Speaker 1:It helps to have like a a team member. I glitched briefly. I couldn't think of the word
Speaker 2:I wanted. Team member. That's what I am to you.
Speaker 1:Brie is my team member
Speaker 2:and your associate. Yeah.
Speaker 1:But I think that leads well into our topic of the day. We switched it up a little bit from what we had said we were gonna talk about last week.
Speaker 2:Because it's our podcast and not yours.
Speaker 1:We pretty much do what we want. And, of course, I'm sure you've all heard by now that the amazing Dolly Parton passed away this week. She was only in her eighties. Was she only 80 straight? Like, 80?
Speaker 1:She was straight.
Speaker 2:She was born in 1946. So, yeah.
Speaker 1:So, yeah. 80. And I think it seems like the world is grieving a little bit. Which is so interesting to me because for us, I'm feeling it. I'm feeling that emotionalness of it.
Speaker 1:And yet she was not our era at all.
Speaker 2:She wasn't our era. She was everybody's era.
Speaker 1:But her big stuff, like her her being the name everybody knew
Speaker 2:Mhmm.
Speaker 1:Was not when we were kids.
Speaker 2:I think when we were kids, she was automatically an icon. Yeah. And we just grew up with her always being there. Yeah. I assumed she would always be there.
Speaker 2:Unfortunately. Unfortunately, that didn't work out for us. So rude.
Speaker 1:But I think it's important that we talk about her because we like to highlight women that have done amazing things with their life. Amazing, amazing women. Whether that's biblical women or women in our world today. Because and Dolly is a little bit of an exception because, of course, everybody's hearing about her right now. But so often we don't hear about women or we let them fade into the background quickly.
Speaker 1:And the impact this woman had is just like, it blows my mind.
Speaker 2:I think she's someone that everybody should aspire to be, and no one will ever be like her again. Mhmm. Because not only did she stand in a room and say, I'm not just gonna beat someone that you forget about. You're gonna remember me. Mhmm.
Speaker 2:And I'm gonna do it my way. Check out my hair and my outfit. My boobs. My boobs. And I'm gonna be unapologetically me.
Speaker 2:Mhmm. But I'm also gonna be so, so generous Mhmm. With what I have. And that's the legacy she leaves behind isn't just for her celebrity. Mhmm.
Speaker 2:It's for her gift to humanity. And that's actually a quote from Kyle Young, who's the CEO of the Country Music Hall of Fame, which obviously she would be in.
Speaker 1:Right. I think she's she's the only one there.
Speaker 2:His quote on the website do you hear my bracelets, Yes. Do. The quote on the Country Music Hall of Fame when you pull up her page is him saying, her legacy is not celebrity, but humanity. She was a champion of equality and literacy. She was a picture of dignity.
Speaker 2:Even when dressed outrageously, anyone who seeks to be more like Dolly is on the right track, but they'll never get to the finish line, which obviously, obviously she's Dolly. She came from poverty to become the most important native of Tennessee. She shared her fortune for the good of all of us. She shared her soul in every note that she sang. Mhmm.
Speaker 2:Which was so true.
Speaker 1:Bree's weeping over here. It's fine.
Speaker 2:You know what? What an amazing woman. Yeah. And that's, like, why the world is grieving so much, was not just because of her amazing music, but all of the other things that she did. And we can get into it now.
Speaker 2:I'm so excited too. Buckle in your seat belt, because this is a podcast that Brianna researched. So who knows where we're headed? Who knows? So Dolly spent her entire life being underestimated by absolutely everybody because of the way she looked, because of where she came from, because of her femininity.
Speaker 2:Think of her boobs. Hair, the way she presented herself, her accent. Meanwhile, she built an entertainment empire, maintained ownership of all her work, created jobs, she financed education, she changed childhood literacy worldwide, she funded medical research, and repeatedly chose generosity towards people, even the people that had hurt her. Mhmm. So she grew up super poor in the foothills of Tennessee.
Speaker 2:Oh, the foothills. Appalachia. It was literally a one room cabin. Eventually, it expanded into two rooms because her family expanded Mhmm. Because she was one of 12 children Yeah.
Speaker 2:That her parents decided to have. Yeah.
Speaker 1:Sorry, those of you out there with 12 children.
Speaker 2:Yeah. So I watched a lot of interviews where she talked about her childhood. And she was saying that her dad worked the land. So they didn't own that land specifically, but he worked it. And they grew a lot of their own food and raised a lot of their own food.
Speaker 2:And the only time they were going to the grocery store was for things like sugar and flour. Yeah. Kinds of things that you couldn't grow or raise yourself. And it wasn't a ton of extra food either. She was like, we raised pigs, but not enough to make money off of them, only enough to eat for the winter.
Speaker 2:Right. They shared a bed. Like, all the girls shared a bed and all the boys shared a bed. And they talked about, you know, sometimes you didn't make it to the bathroom because there was no electricity. There was no running water.
Speaker 2:So the bathroom was outside.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:And so in the middle of the night when you had to go, it's terrifying out there. Things are happening outside. So she would have to wake up her siblings to come outside with her to go to the bathroom. So that's kind of where she came from. Like, absolutely no money.
Speaker 2:But she always knew that she wanted to sing because that's something that her mom started. So they she was raised in a Christian faith, which I don't think is a secret. But they were Pentecostal, so music was a big part of her childhood. Her mom taught her Christian hymns, that kind of thing, but also some folk music that came from her family history. So she would perform to her family on their porch.
Speaker 2:So that's where she started wanting to become a performer. And she actually recorded her first song called Puppy Love when she was 12. And she talks about in the interviews knocking on everybody's doors and trying to get people to listen to her music. So eventually she went and sang at the Grand Ole Opry. I think she was like 13.
Speaker 2:She was still very young. And when she came back to finish out school, she talked about how she got bullied a lot by all the different people there. They were calling her whore. They were calling her a tramp. And the girls didn't want to be her friend, but all the boys did.
Speaker 2:But she persevered. She just kept pushing through. And when she graduated high school as the first, I believe, person in her family to graduate high school check me, though. I could be wrong on that. She moved to Nashville because that's where she wanted to start her music career.
Speaker 2:And on the day that she moved to Nashville, she met her husband, Carl.
Speaker 1:Oh, Carl. Oh, Carl.
Speaker 2:I think they met at the laundromat or something outside the laundromat.
Speaker 1:The first thing she did, she was like, I gotta do laundry, man. Yes.
Speaker 2:And she talks about how she was wanting to be really focused on her career, and she didn't want a boyfriend because she had had a boyfriend in the past. Well, probably a few. Mhmm. But wanted just to focus on herself, and then, bing, bang, boom.
Speaker 1:There was Carl.
Speaker 2:Double checking. Can
Speaker 1:you imagine? My gosh. I hope it's like Dave.
Speaker 2:Herbert. Yes. Carl Dean. She met him. Carl.
Speaker 2:Oh, Carl. I'm gonna start singing a song about Carl. There's an interview on E that I was watching on YouTube that had to be quite old because it still had all the old commercials on it. Mhmm. But her sister was saying that all of the people that called her all the names growing up when she was in school were the same people that were lining up saying they knew her.
Speaker 1:Right.
Speaker 2:Oh, Trying to get into her concerts.
Speaker 1:Backstage passes, all that stuff.
Speaker 2:As it goes. But that's one thing with Dolly Parton is she was, like, born for the stage. Mhmm. She didn't let a lot stop her. Even though people were slamming doors in her face, even though people were judging her, she just kept on doing what she knew she was meant to do Yeah.
Speaker 2:Which was eventually to become the biggest celebrity ever.
Speaker 1:I think it's important too, though, to say I mean, she was bullied if she went to the Grand Ole Opry when she's, like, 13, that's a very young child to have to put up with those kinds of names, those kinds of assumptions. And I'm sure it wasn't just from kids her age. I'm sure it was from their parents. I'm sure it was from the community. You know?
Speaker 1:Mhmm. And it is it's amazing that she stood in the face of it. And yet at the same time, I wonder what it was like inside her own head. You know? Mhmm.
Speaker 1:Because regardless of how strong of a person you are, none of that's easy. No. And so I'm sure that she dealt with probably some mental health struggles because she's getting beaten down everywhere she goes. And she was determined enough to do it, but it's not easy.
Speaker 2:Yeah. Speaking of mental health, her mom dealt with pretty severe depression. I think it started they lost a baby. And that kind of triggered what Dolly said herself was her mom's deep depression. Yeah.
Speaker 2:So Dolly and her other siblings and Dolly's husband kind of had to help raise some of her younger siblings. Mhmm. And even though she didn't have any children of her own, she was very much a mother figure to so many people. Mhmm. Like Miley Cyrus.
Speaker 2:She's her great But her siblings, there's so many people in her life that she was very maternal towards. Even though she did actively choose not to have any children of her own. She got her tubes tied. But that's just an interesting note. Yeah.
Speaker 2:So eventually, after she was in Nashville, she got a job on the Porter Wagner show. And it was kind of like a music show. I'm picturing like what's the one we used to watch?
Speaker 1:Yeah. Oh, like a variety show. But there was one we used to watch.
Speaker 2:The the
Speaker 1:oh. We loved it.
Speaker 2:Lawrence Welk. That was it. Lawrence Which is amazing because that show was from 1955 to 1982. We were little Baptist children when they're watching the Lawrence Welk. That's what we were allowed to watch.
Speaker 2:Yes. So Porter Wagner was a country music person, and he had his music show. And he was very much like a rhinestone cowboy. Don't know that that term really applies because I don't fully understand what a rhinestone cowboy is. But he He was a cowboy singing, but he had very much a style to him.
Speaker 2:Okay. Bedazzled. Mhmm. And his, what they quote unquote, call female singer Mhmm. On the show, left to go, I don't know what she was going to do.
Speaker 2:So they were hiring a female singer. Mhmm. And she came in and sang a few songs for him, and he hired her for the show. And he's like, what do you think about being part of the show? And she's like, let me think about it.
Speaker 2:Yes. Finally. So this is kind of like her big break. Not that she hasn't been doing a few other things before this. Mhmm.
Speaker 2:But this is kinda like her big break where she's in front of a lot of people.
Speaker 1:Now was this on TV? This is on TV. Okay.
Speaker 2:So her first show, people were really upset that the original girl singer was gone.
Speaker 1:Ugh. Girl singer number one.
Speaker 2:I know. They were booing her. Can you imagine booing Dolly Parton? Right. My gosh.
Speaker 2:And her look was very just of the time. Clean-cut. Mhmm. Nothing crazy about her. But it was Porter Wagner who kind of produced her in a way that was eventually became Dolly Parton.
Speaker 2:Right. The wigs. The outfits. Boobs, man. The boobs.
Speaker 2:The bedazzle. The makeup. Like, the nails. Nothing really real
Speaker 1:about What you think of when you think Dolly Parton.
Speaker 2:Yes. But she owned it. Mhmm. And she knew that she was able to manipulate people. Mhmm.
Speaker 2:Even though she looked the way that she did, and she became in her own way like a Marilyn Monroe, like a sex symbol, she knew that people are gonna underestimate her. And that's one of her really popular songs is Dumb Blonde. I think it came out before she was on the Porter Wagon show. But how she can manipulate people. Yeah.
Speaker 2:And there was an interview that she said someone asked her how it felt to be a dumb blonde or something. She's like, well, I know I'm not dumb and I know I'm not blonde. So it's fine. There you
Speaker 1:go. I mean, realistically, women have been trampled on by men forever, since the beginning of time. And so, especially in this era, she had to do what she could and take it and twist it Mhmm.
Speaker 2:To her advantage. Twist it and reverse it, just like what surface said. I who? What's her name? Oh, no.
Speaker 2:Flip it in reverse.
Speaker 1:Someone out there is
Speaker 2:Lucy Elliott. Just screamed at you. One of those hits during the time was Coat of Many Colors, which she wrote as kind of a spoof of Joseph and the Coat of Many Colors. But it was about a childhood experience that she had where a family donated a box of rags to her family, And her mom made her a coat out of all these scraps of fabric. Called it the coat of many colors.
Speaker 2:Oh, yeah. And when she went to school, people were making fun of her because she was poor, and they couldn't afford anything. And this coat was a bunch of different colors. And I think it's still on display in Dollywood. I'm pretty sure.
Speaker 2:I could be wrong. But how her mom kind of changed the narrative when she came home and was upset about that. Her mom changed the narrative and said, we may be poor financially, but we're rich in so many things. Yeah. And that's, I think, where her positivity came from, too.
Speaker 2:And you'll hear her in different interviews talk about her childhood where she could be really upset about how much in poverty they were. Yeah. But she just talks about how rich they were in their family. I had parents who loved me. I was surrounded by people who supported me.
Speaker 2:What an amazing childhood it
Speaker 1:was. So
Speaker 2:Porter Wagner helped her get her start, but she knew that she couldn't stay on the show anymore. Yeah. She wanted to be out on her own. She wanted to be doing her own things, and he was kind of holding her back. Yeah.
Speaker 2:She outgrew him. For he didn't want her to do x y z. Mhmm. He wanted to control her story. What?
Speaker 2:A man controlling a woman? No way. Aw. It's never, never been done before. Never.
Speaker 2:So she did something that Dolly always does. And she wrote a song. What? And she wrote, she wrote, she walked into his office and sang this song, I will always love you.
Speaker 1:Can you imagine? Hold on. Hold on, bud. I know
Speaker 2:you're sitting at your desk.
Speaker 1:I know you're just writing a letter.
Speaker 2:And Dolly comes in. Dolly comes in. No. A lot of people think it's a romantic song, but it's not. It's It was about a business relationship that she had, and she's saying, even though it hurts you, I have to go.
Speaker 2:Even though I know this is causing you pain, I need to go my I need to go my own way. What's that from? Oh, don't sing another song You're from not even picking good songs. How dare you? You're hurting Dolly.
Speaker 2:Anyways, that's where I Will Always Love You came about. She eventually left the show, and Porter Wagner decided, Hey, I need to get more money off of her. So I'm gonna sue her because I helped build who she is. And I should get a portion of her proceeds. Yeah.
Speaker 2:I think he wanted 15% of anything she ever made. Can you
Speaker 1:imagine how much that would be?
Speaker 2:I know. So he sued her for $3,000,000 and they settled on 1,000,000, which she couldn't even afford at the time. Mhmm. And she had to pay over time to this guy. So she when she talks about him in interviews, she talks about how the relationship is definitely strained because she loves him because he helped her get her start, helped her shape who she was.
Speaker 2:But at the same time, there was so much frustration in that business relationship too. Well, I think
Speaker 1:that speaks to a lot of you think of, like, Taylor Swift has a song out right now on her latest album. It's Father Figure. And and she talks about a similar vibe. Obviously not quite as much, but where an agent is with a young singer and says, well, I built you, therefore I get a piece of everything.
Speaker 2:Mhmm.
Speaker 1:And you have to take a step back and say there we see that in everyday world too, where we may help someone, and then we kind of expect a level of ownership of them. But you should help someone because helping someone is a great thing to do. You should like, in Porter Wagner's case, you should help grow someone and build someone because that's an amazing legacy to leave. Mhmm. Not because I want money out of them later.
Speaker 1:Yeah. But that's how our world is, is we we find ownership in other people.
Speaker 2:Mhmm. Yeah. For sure. And that's something just special about Dolly that she knew from the very beginning was to maintain the rights to her music.
Speaker 1:Mhmm.
Speaker 2:And when Elvis Presley came up to her and said, Hey, I wanna record your song, I Will Always Love You. That did you like my impression of him? It was so Hey there, pretty Dolly.
Speaker 1:It was like he rose from the grave.
Speaker 2:I wanna write your song. Just kidding. Not write. I wanna sing your song. Things are getting weird here.
Speaker 2:But in order for him to record a song, he required, like, 50% ownership of that song. And she thought about it for a long time and eventually told him no. And she talks about sitting in her bathroom and crying over that decision. Because can you imagine telling Elvis Presley, who wants to sing your song, that you wrote Elvis Presley?
Speaker 1:The biggest name in existence at that time.
Speaker 2:She said, no. Mhmm. And eventually, Whitney Houston recorded that song because she was in the movie The Bodyguard and sang that song. But because Dolly retained the rights to that, she talks about how she made absolutely so much money Yeah. Because Whitney Houston sang that song.
Speaker 2:Right. So that's amazing. Mhmm. Good for her. Nice businesswoman.
Speaker 2:You kinda want
Speaker 1:her to not to throw it back
Speaker 2:to Taylor Swift again. Yeah. But, you
Speaker 1:know, there's been this whole thing where she wanted to get the rights to all of her original songs, all of her original recordings. And oh, what's his name? Scooter Braun Mhmm. Owned them and wouldn't let her have them. And I wonder if kind of that came from from Dolly.
Speaker 1:Like, hey, I see what you did.
Speaker 2:Taylor Swift came out with a statement after Dolly Parton died. And it was something like, for the tight ropes you walked so that we all could run or something like that. But a lot of similarities between Dolly and Taylor Swift, for sure. Not their childhood upbringing. No, not so much.
Speaker 2:Yeah. Briefly jumping back to her husband, Carl.
Speaker 1:Aw, Carl. I missed him. They were married for almost fifty nine years.
Speaker 2:Yeah. Which is incredible for a celebrity or just in general, anybody at all. They met when she was 18. I think he was 22. And they married Porter Wagner.
Speaker 2:I think it was I take that back. They married Porter Wagner. Her music producer at the time didn't want her to get married because they thought it was a bad image for her because she was supposed to be this, you know, female
Speaker 1:sex Sexy. Yeah. To be married
Speaker 2:Mhmm. Would not be a good look for her. And she said, okay. I'll think about it. Just kidding.
Speaker 2:Spice. I'm getting married. Yeah.
Speaker 1:Actually, k pop bands. Apparently, I just learned about this. When you're in a k pop a k pop A
Speaker 2:kick pop band. Kick pop band.
Speaker 1:And when you're in a k pop band, it's expected that you will not even be in a relationship because your fans are supposed to be enough for you. So there was, like, a huge controversy recently of a big k pop star who started dating someone, and people lost their minds. What the heck? Again, because we feel we own other people.
Speaker 2:Mhmm. Especially celebrities. Mhmm. We think that because we know bits and pieces of their life, that they belong to us. Yeah.
Speaker 2:They don't know what gosh darn thing about us. But that doesn't neither here nor there. But Carl, I think, is a really important part of her story. Mhmm. He never tried to own her.
Speaker 2:Yeah. He never tried to manipulate her career. He went to one celebrity type of event with her and came back and said, I never wanna do that again, actually. Hard pass. And he had a job, and he continued doing that job and actually supported Dolly through some of the touring and stuff that her money didn't allow for.
Speaker 2:Mhmm. He supported that. And he was like, do your thing. Which I'm sorry. The bar is so low for men.
Speaker 1:But because you look at
Speaker 2:that and you're like, wow.
Speaker 1:That's incredible. No. That is. It's great. That's a wonderful husband, a wonderful man.
Speaker 1:But it shouldn't be the exception.
Speaker 2:It shouldn't be a shock for him to be like, oh, she can have a career of her own, and I won't ask her
Speaker 1:to stop. Right. I won't try and be bigger than her. I won't try and be more important than her. I won't have a crisis because everyone knows her name, and only the two girls sitting doing a podcast know mine.
Speaker 1:Because we googled it. And we weren't even sure
Speaker 2:it was Carl. She talks about him in interviews, though, and how amazing their relationship is. And she's like, I protect him as much as he protects me. I will not bring him somewhere that he doesn't wanna be. I won't share a picture of him if he doesn't want it to be shared.
Speaker 2:And actually, eventually, they say that what happened because he got sick not too long ago. And she let her health go because she was caring for him so much that eventually she didn't do so well.
Speaker 1:Yeah. Which, I mean, it that does happen with people. But especially, I think, because she talks about her Christian faith a lot, so we can pull that into all of this too. And I don't know what Carl's faith was. Mhmm.
Speaker 1:But likely similar based on the time period and such. And you look at Christian marriages from that era. This was an anomaly.
Speaker 2:Mhmm.
Speaker 1:To have a man supportive of his wife's career, to have a man who didn't need to be bigger than her, to not need a submissive little wife, to say, okay, you can be a sex symbol, and I'm fine with it.
Speaker 2:I look back on Marilyn Monroe. Mhmm. And I think it was her first marriage.
Speaker 1:It was to the I think the baseball player is the one you're thinking
Speaker 2:of. Yeah. And he just wanted her to basically stop everything that He she was wanted to own her. And just be his wife and have his children. And that ended in divorce.
Speaker 1:Right.
Speaker 2:But just the juxtaposition of someone so famous trying to be controlled Mhmm. By someone. How dare you?
Speaker 1:And look at the health of if you compare these two different people. Marilyn Monroe passed away under tragic circumstances. Right? Her mental health was always a problem. Drugs were always a problem.
Speaker 1:Whereas Dolly and I don't know her or her drinking or drug history necessarily, but she had people around her. She had family around her. She had a husband around her. She had friends around her that loved and supported and cared for her. And she created that community too.
Speaker 1:It's not like it just happened. She helped create that. And because there's this circle of amazing people, she spent a lifetime in the spotlight and yet still spent a lifetime doing good. Spent a lifetime being positive and happy, which you don't see a lot of in celebrity culture. No.
Speaker 2:You don't. Now I'd like to talk about Dollywood.
Speaker 1:Oh, I'm ready. I've never been.
Speaker 2:I've never been either, but I'm now convinced that we must go.
Speaker 1:Well, we did drive six hours just to go to a Buc ee's. So
Speaker 2:So why not a similar distance?
Speaker 1:For Dolly. For Dolly. I'd do anything for you, Dolly.
Speaker 2:Dollywood is located in Tennessee, and she teamed up with the Herschen family and basically transformed Silver Dollar City, Tennessee into Dollywood. And from the outside, you're like, okay, cute. She wanted her own theme park with her name on it. Wonderful. But actually, what she did was she went back and she thought about the poverty that she experienced as a child, went back to Tennessee, said, I'm going to build this massive theme park here to create hundreds and hundreds of jobs for the people here that don't have the jobs.
Speaker 2:Yeah. So the people that she knew growing up in poverty now have a chance to have a career and a really good career. Mhmm. Because she treats her employees supposedly from the outside very well. They have chance for, yeah, 100% tuition coverage, books and fees included.
Speaker 2:It's called the Grow You program. And that's a really great opportunity because she really values education as well. And she thinks that if you at least can read, then you already have a leg up. And she knows that because her dad was unable to read and write all his life. He was illiterate.
Speaker 2:And it's something that he was, I guess, really self conscious about. Mhmm. So then she started the Imagination Library, which probably a lot of people are familiar with. But it started in her hometown of Tennessee, where anybody, regardless of their income Mhmm. Like, ages zero to when you start kindergarten, you get a book a month that's age appropriate for that child.
Speaker 2:Mhmm. And in her interview, she talks about how it encourages the parents too to read with their child. It excites the kid because they get a little piece of mail with their own name on it every month. And rather than slap her names on anything else, she slapped her name on a children's book. And I think that's really important.
Speaker 2:It didn't just stay in her hometown of Tennessee. It expanded, like, all over The US, parts of Canada, The UK. It was everywhere. And they gave away, three forty million children's books have been given away at this point. And that's amazing.
Speaker 2:Yeah. And there's research that shows areas that have Dolly Parton's Imagination Library, the literacy rates are up. Mhmm.
Speaker 1:We actually have a lot of personal experience with this. So my daughter, she's 11 now and taller than me. But when she was little, we were very low income. There was no way I was going and getting her cute little books. You know, like, we were doing a designer nursery.
Speaker 1:And we lived in an area where they did have the Imagination Library. At the time, not all the counties in Michigan had it, but ours did. And so we signed up. And it was so cool. It was just so cool because every month, a really nice book you're not talking about, okay, it's made of paper and it's gonna fall apart in three seconds.
Speaker 1:Like, a really nice book came in the mail. It came with her name on it, and we got to read it together. Some of them are favorite books still. And it has a little imagination library thing on it. Now, unfortunately, she didn't get to go all the way through the program because we moved when she was three to a county that did not have it.
Speaker 1:But I have heard that when the kids graduate from the program, they get their final book and then they get a video message from her that she recorded. And it's you gotta go online and watch it. You can find it on YouTube. And she also wrote them each a letter. And it basically says, go out into the world.
Speaker 1:Do amazing things. I'm proud of you. Oh, Bree's weeping. Okay, guys. I saw it coming and
Speaker 2:I just wanted to keep going. It's not nice.
Speaker 1:It really it's it's truly beautiful because I'm sure being in the celebrity world, she saw a lot of kids that were not loved in the way that she was loved, that she wanted to love people. And so she's sending books oftentimes to very low income kids, and she's telling them, I'm proud of you, and you can do anything. Mhmm. And we did for a little while with my son as well because they did open it up in our area. Unfortunately, because of our current administration, funding was cut, I think, last year for the program.
Speaker 1:And so that's not available in our area anymore. But I would encourage you guys to call your legislators, to talk to your local government because it's an important program and funding is being cut for it. Dolly Parton obviously funded a massive percentage of it, but local governments had to kind of buy in. They had to find grants and things like that to help out with certain costs. I think mostly just the shipping costs they had to cover.
Speaker 1:And it's being cut. It's being cut all over the place because our government in The United States does not care about our kids, does not care about literacy, And they're fully willing to have our kids be the ones that suffer. Whereas Dolly Parton was standing in that gap and saying, no, I'm gonna change things.
Speaker 2:Mhmm.
Speaker 1:And I so desperately don't want that legacy to go away. Mhmm. Because it is amazing. And it's proven.
Speaker 2:Like, her belief was, if you're able to read, then you can pick up the books and educate yourself on almost anything. Right. You have such a leg up if you can read. And what a blessing Mhmm. She was.
Speaker 1:I think about this regularly, and maybe I've said this on the podcast before, but I think I've
Speaker 2:said everything on the podcast before at this point.
Speaker 1:But I think often about when I get to heaven, if there will be people there that will say, hey, you impacted me. And I used to think about it when I volunteered a lot at church and be like, okay. Because I was in the kids department. Maybe I will have impacted these kids. And they might not remember me, but maybe in heaven, they'll be like, hey, I remember you.
Speaker 1:And now I hope that it's a lot of you guys too. But I think about that a lot, the impact that we have. What is the impact that you have at the end of your life? And as Christians, we should have a big impact. Even if it's just to a couple people.
Speaker 1:I'm not expecting you all to start your own imagination libraries. I am. Alright. Well, you're not gonna live up to breed standards. I already told you you couldn't be Dolly.
Speaker 2:No one gets an a plus in
Speaker 1:these class. But I want that for all of us. I want us to leave this world having had an impact on the people in our lives. And I don't just mean your kids. I think as women, we so often think because we were taught this.
Speaker 1:You're supposed to raise your children, and that's your sphere of influence. And if you raise good kids, then they'll be good people and whatever. Your sphere of influence should be bigger.
Speaker 2:Mhmm.
Speaker 1:It should be more. You should also raise your kids well if you have them, but you should impact your community. You should impact the people around you, even if it's in a weird way. Brie and I do that through the podcast and through fighting through horrible social media comments oftentimes. Mhmm.
Speaker 1:And that's an impact that I can manage at this point in my life. Because sometimes you can't do everything. And maybe you can't do this, but you can volunteer at your church, and that's an impact that you have. Or maybe you can't do that, but you can make dinner for your neighbor. Who will remember you?
Speaker 1:What
Speaker 2:is your legacy? And not in, like, a selfish No. Self righteous way. Like, I wanna be remembered. But I want to be remembered because I impacted people's lives so much for the better Mhmm.
Speaker 2:That their lives are now better. Mhmm.
Speaker 1:Think about the generations of people that get impacted by Dolly now. Because I think about our family in particular. So our grandparents, our grandpa was from a Catholic family, and our grandma was from I believe they were Pentecostal.
Speaker 2:Just like Dolly. Just like Dolly.
Speaker 1:And together they decided to go to a Baptist church eventually. And that impacted the family in some positive ways and in some negative ways as we sit here. But now you see generation after generation after generation, we're on generation three now, of a whole bunch of people who believe in and love God. Because they made a decision, because their choices impacted generations of people. Dolly, by helping people read, impacts generations.
Speaker 1:Because now those people's children, they will make it a priority that my child learns to read and write and goes to school. Maybe not every one of them, but a lot of them.
Speaker 2:I think something interesting about Dolly is that she's a Christian, yes. But her version of Christianity rarely seemed interested in deciding who deserved kindness. Where so often now, the Christianity that we see stereotypically chooses who deserves kindness Mhmm. And who does not. And Dolly's version of Christianity looks a lot more similar to Jesus, to me.
Speaker 2:Yeah. And the jobs that she created isn't the only thing. The books that she's giving away to children is not the only thing that she did. In 1991, she created a program offering $500 to local seventh and eighth graders who completed high school. So as soon as they completed it, they got $500 She had a My People Fund that after the twenty sixteen Great Smoky Mountain wildfires provided financial assistance to families who lost their homes.
Speaker 2:She supported HIV and AIDS awareness, like many other public figures did. But that's something of note specifically because she's a Christian woman. She's a country singing woman. Right. But she knew how important that was, and it was important to her.
Speaker 2:So she raised awareness and raised funds for that. Mhmm. She also, I think, helped fund the research for the Moderna vaccine during COVID. Oh, okay. She supported LGBTQ plus people and same sex marriage.
Speaker 2:And she spoke with compassion towards the transgender people. She supported racial justices. She spoke about the Black Lives Matter. She just loved so many people and without any guardrails.
Speaker 1:Mhmm.
Speaker 2:She just loved them. And what's interesting about her is that so many people claim Dolly. Yeah. So many different groups of people claim Dolly. So the country fans claim Dolly.
Speaker 2:The queer people claim Dolly. The Christians claim Dolly. Drag queens, the Appalachians. Hollywood, the working class, Southerners, the feminists. There's so many different groups of people who don't agree on anything else.
Speaker 2:Mhmm. But they all feel like they own Dolly in some way, and what a legacy to leave that all of these people, even though they're fighting, even though they don't agree, they all agree that Dolly was theirs. Mhmm.
Speaker 1:Well, even and this is about to go controversial on all of you. But our horrible president said that we were gonna fly the flags at half mast for a week after Dolly passed away. And now I agree with absolutely nothing this man has ever done in his whole life. But it's interesting that someone like her who fought for LGBTQ rights, who fought for AIDS research, who fought for literacy, who stood in places where our current administration would say that's evil, is even there being honored. Now, I'm not saying I want to be honored in this administration.
Speaker 1:But it's just really interesting that even there, people can say she led with love in every interaction she had. It wasn't love but or love if. It was just, okay, how can I jump into this situation and do good here?
Speaker 2:And she never forgot, growing up in such poverty, what a blessing her financial situation was. Mhmm. And didn't hoard it. Mhmm. She didn't claim it all as hers.
Speaker 2:She gave as much as she could, while still prioritizing herself. Yeah. I mean, in the interview, she's like, if I see something sagging dragon or something, I'm getting it nipped, tucked, and sucked. A beautiful image for all. Or something along those lines.
Speaker 2:Like, she wore the glittery costume. Yeah. She had her hair in a certain way. She went to sleep in her makeup. Good gracious.
Speaker 2:Because she thought, if I'm going out anywhere, like, in an emergency, if I have to flee my home, I will not be photographed without my makeup on. More power to it. She said in an interview, the only thing that would get me to leave without my makeup on is if something was happening to my husband. But even then, I would think twice.
Speaker 1:I just I love so many things about her. And I don't feel like I fully appreciated her, especially as a younger person. Because as a Christian and someone who grew up in Baptist circles, yes, she in theory was a Christian, but also she was out there with giant boobs. And I know I've said boobs like four times in this episode. But that was like the major focus when she was talked about in having been raised in purity culture.
Speaker 1:That's still not okay. Even if
Speaker 2:she says she's a Christian and she's doing good. She resembled her look, she said in an interview, off of the town Tramp. Mhmm. And she looked at her mom one day and she was like, Oh, that girl is beautiful. And her mom was like, Ugh, she's just trash.
Speaker 2:And she's like, Well, that's what I wanna be one day. I wanna be trash. So her look is designed very intentionally. A little bit trashy. Yeah.
Speaker 2:A little bit like the town tramp. But she owned that. Mhmm. And even still, even with her boobs out, and her nails, and her hair, and her makeup, she's a strong businesswoman. Mhmm.
Speaker 2:She took advantage of people who were underestimating her and said, I'm going to show you who I am. And so, so kind. Mhmm. So, so good.
Speaker 1:I read I've been reading a lot of celebrities have posted letters and stuff that she sent them. And I actually read one from Eminem.
Speaker 2:Mhmm. Yeah. I heard about that.
Speaker 1:And he said he never actually met Dolly. But she sent him a letter one day. And he posted the letter, but I don't have it verbatim memorized in my head because that'd be weird. But basically, she was saying like, hey, I don't listen to rap music at all. But I have heard about you, and I saw you perform.
Speaker 1:And I just think you're amazing, and I want you to know that you have something special. And just kind of went on and on and on. And sent him this letter. For no reason at all. I mean, like, this man would never have expected
Speaker 2:to cross paths with Dolly Barton. But that's who she was. That's what she did. She stepped
Speaker 1:out of any bubble. Country music, woman, Christian, all of these things. Right? All these labels we could throw at her. She stepped out of them and interacted with anybody, even those who didn't cross her path, and became an encouraging light for them.
Speaker 1:Mhmm. Imagine getting a letter from the Dolly Parton.
Speaker 2:The Dolly Parton sent me a handwritten letter? That's strange. I know. What a grandma thing to do. Right.
Speaker 1:It is. Gonna write I'm gonna write that boy a letter.
Speaker 2:And think of how busy this woman had a lot Yeah. Going And yet, he wasn't the only one that she did this with. Oh, I think about her, like, her every her resume, I guess, her CV, everything that she's done. How did that woman have the time? To breathe?
Speaker 2:To breathe. Like, she has Dollywood. She has her own music career. She has a TV career. She had a producing career.
Speaker 2:Like, side note, if you didn't know, she teamed up with some other person. I think it's called Sand Dollar Productions. Mhmm. And they produced Buffy the Vampire Slayer.
Speaker 1:Oh, interesting. So casually, she's interested in film.
Speaker 2:Mhmm. Like, nine to five. They did a nine to five musical. I think it was on Broadway briefly, which it won some awards too. But she wrote all the music for the Broadway musical.
Speaker 2:She all has all of her philanthropy. Mhmm. She's writing letters to Eminem. She's the godmother of Miley Cyrus.
Speaker 1:Which had to be a lot of work. Let's be real.
Speaker 2:Yeah. In an interview, I saw she was like, no, I just love Miley so much. She's like, you know what? I'm gonna stop right there. She loved her so much.
Speaker 2:She's like, I might not agree with everything she does, but I don't have to. My job is just to love her. And she's gonna make her own decisions in the same way that I made my own decisions. And then eventually, we'll figure things out.
Speaker 1:Yeah. Okay. Let's all think of the amount of pressure that that takes off of you as a person. If you can look at other people and say, I don't have to agree with everything you do. It's not my job.
Speaker 1:I'm just gonna love you.
Speaker 2:Mhmm.
Speaker 1:And that's the end of the list.
Speaker 2:It would end a lot of suffering.
Speaker 1:It would. It would end a lot of arguments over Thanksgiving dinner as we head into the holiday season. That in and of itself is a beautiful example. You don't have to agree with everything someone else does. They don't agree with everything you did.
Speaker 1:Yeah. And that is okay. And it doesn't mean that one of you is right and one of you is wrong. It just means our job is to love others. Mhmm.
Speaker 1:And that's pretty much it.
Speaker 2:And that's the Dolly legacy. What a beautiful wrap up we've done. Yeah. We're really good at this today. I know.
Speaker 2:But we're like almost professionals. To be fair, I did summon Dolly Parton before we started this.
Speaker 1:You did. You did do that. Like Samuel.
Speaker 2:I mean, maybe it worked out for us.
Speaker 1:Maybe. Dolly?
Speaker 2:Do wanna do this from now on? Okay. So next week, we'll head back
Speaker 1:to our regularly scheduled programming unless some impactful celebrity dies again.
Speaker 2:Can we talk about the three? I know. Grie, Hayden, Dolly? Rude. I know.
Speaker 2:Hopefully, it's
Speaker 1:just three. You never know. Mhmm. But we are gonna be talking about the book God Didn't Make Us to Hate Us, and talk about the love of God. And do we really believe that God is loving?
Speaker 1:Or do we pin the label of loving on him, but then give him a lot of really hateful characteristics? I encourage you guys,
Speaker 2:as your weekly homework, to go find this book, locate it at your local library, get it on an audiobook, get the physical copy on wherever you buy your books. At least read the introduction. Because the introduction to me is so impactful, it will change your brain chemistry. Wow.
Speaker 1:Yeah. That's a lot of promises. Well, will. I'm gonna have to put a medical disclaimer on this episode because Okay. Of
Speaker 2:Well, do what you must.
Speaker 1:Alright. So be prepared to be chemically changed next week. It'll be a big day for us all. Love you. Bye.
Speaker 1:Bye.