Tuesday, November 13, 2007

Do It on Purpose


Miss Janey's delightful post about The CMA's over at HATtastic! brought to mind this quote by Dolly Parton, which has always been one of my favorites:

“Find out who you are and do it on purpose.”

What a wonderfully distilled personal style manifesto! Someday I'll get the first part down, and then I figure the second part will be a piece of cake.


(Just when I think I've figured out who I am and how to express that style-wise, BAM, I'll see someone wearing something fabulous that's 180 degrees from what I've been doing, and decide "I want to wear THAT!" It's a state of perpetual freekin identity crisis, I tell you.

I wonder if Dolly ever wakes up some mornings and decides she wants to cut her hair short and wear more Armani?)
Posted by at 7:26 PM
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7 comments:

  1. Dejapseu: I have always found Dolly Parton a breath of fresh air. :-)

    Whether she wants to cut her hair and wear more Armani, well, this is what she said in a UK interview (also cited on Wikipedia):

    "I patterned myself after this woman that was the town tramp back home. She had blond hair and high heels and red fingernails and lips, and to me she was like what movie stars were to other kids. We'd see her, and I'd say, "Oh, look, she's got plastic goldfish in her heels!" and my mama would say, "She ain't nothin' but trash, nothin' but trash," and I thought, "Ooh, that's what I'm gonna be when I grow up — trash!"
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  2. Dolly is actually one of the three people, living or dead I would most like to have lunch with.

    I was just pondering whether privately her certainty ever wavers, but ultimately I'd guess probably not.
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  3. I love Dolly! Talk about a sense of humor.

    Then I try to dress myself in things that make me laugh, and I end up looking like an overgrown toddler...sigh.
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  4. Thanks for the props, Miss Deja.

    Miss Janey saw Dolly on Oprah years ago. Oprah said, "I've never seen you without make-up and wigs."

    "And you never will," Miss Dolly drolly replied adn received a huge laugh. Miss J LOVES her.
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  5. I know exactly what you mean about the identity shifts -- for some time now, I've felt really good about the match between "my insides and my outsides," to put it crudely, but for a while there, I was buying clothes, shoes, that within months I'd realize weren't me at all, but someone I'd thought I could be, or wanted to be. I'm surprised to hear you say something similar, since you seem quite certain in your writing, but I remind myself that we only represent part of ourselves (or represent ourselves partially?) in our blogs.
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  6. I'm actually going to expand on this soon, but I'm probably not as tentative these days as I sound in that post. What it really reflects is more my history, coming from a combination of growing up in such a transitional era fashion-wise, and not always trusting my own judgement. But I've never had a singular, clear vision of how I wanted to present myself to the world; it still shifts from time to time.
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  7. "But I've never had a singular, clear vision of how I wanted to present myself to the world; it still shifts from time to time." You and me both. But maybe that IS who we are. Maybe we aren't just one thing?
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