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Welcome to Fair Play, a column exploring the shifting dynamics of sex, dating and culture by Playboy Senior Editor Magdalene Taylor.
On August 25th, 2026, we lost one of our nation’s most universally beloved figures: Dolly Parton. She will always be remembered for her endless generosity, her country pluck and her brilliantly simple yet often heartwrenching songs. And she will also be remembered—and I say this with complete respect and admiration—for her over-the-top breasts. And thus, many fans are mourning her accordingly: by celebrating their own bustiness, too.
“A reminder to live like Dolly Parton: be kind to people, and showcase your large breasts,” one woman, @dannarebb, wrote on X. “no bras tomorrow for anybody. tits at half mast,” said @thenightbethore.
It might sound reductive to attempt to honor a woman so kind and talented for one physical trait, but it was clear throughout Dolly Parton’s life that she embraced this facet of herself, just the same. She never shied away from wearing low cut clothing or bristled at jokes from comedians about her breasts, nor did she overintellectualize them, either. She embraced what she called the “trashy” look long before terms like “bimbo feminism” entered the mainstream.
Dolly was always vocal about the intentionality behind her appearance and aesthetics. In her 1978 interview with Playboy, she discussed how record companies often tried to encourage her to tone down her look, and yet she refused. To do so would be inauthentic to her true self.
“If I can’t make it on my talent, then I don’t want to do it,” she said. “I have to look the way I choose to look, and this is what I’ve chose. It makes me different a little bit, and ain’t that what we all want to do: be a little different? It’s fun for me.”
In the same interview, she discussed her relationship with sexuality. “I always loved sex,” she said. “I never had a bad experience with it. I was just very emotional. I felt that I could show my emotion just like I show my emotion with words. If I felt I wanted to share an emotion, then I did. To me, sex was not dirty. It was somethin’ very intimate and very real. I don’t ever remember bein’ afraid of it.”
Much has already been said since her passing about how the adoration for Dolly transcended cultural and political lines. She is one of the rare few to be memorialized by both Donald Trump and the DSA, for example. And while surely it is her personality and philanthropy that yielded this, I can’t help but believe that her attitude toward sex and beauty helped shape this, too. Dolly was a woman who vocally embraced the style of the “town hooker,” not in order to appeal to men but not in opposition to them, either.
Sex and sexuality, in Dolly’s world, are natural—even if her boobs weren’t. It’s only right, then, that we would celebrate her life by embracing the same style of gaudiness and reverence for the bosom that she was known for. Is posting pictures of your cleavage in her name a little bit tacky? Of course. So was Dolly.
