Source : INDIA TODAY NEWS
Country music legend Dolly Parton, who died at 80, was known for many things – her music, songwriting, business acumen and unmistakable personality. But the country music icon also had a famously playful relationship with her image. Among her most memorable jokes was one involving her breasts, which she named “Shock” and “Awe” after the military phrase popularised during the 2003 Iraq War.
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The nickname became public in 2008, when reports revealed that Parton had given the names to her breasts. The phrase “shock and awe”, formerly known as rapid dominance, referred to a military strategy intended to overwhelm an opponent. Parton turned the dramatic terminology into a joke about her own famously voluptuous figure, in keeping with the self-deprecating humour that became part of her public persona.
Parton had never been particularly shy about discussing her appearance. Her trademark big hair, glamorous make-up, fitted clothes and cleavage were deliberate elements of the image she developed early in her career. She once said she had been inspired by a woman she remembered as the “town tramp” in her hometown of Sevierville, Tennessee.
Over the years, Parton gave her breasts several playful names, including “the girls”, “puppies”, “little soldiers” and “jugs”. In 2008, after postponing part of a US tour because of back pain, she joked about having to “wag these puppies around”.
The “Shock” and “Awe” story also sits alongside another famous Dolly Parton connection – Dolly the sheep, the first mammal cloned from an adult somatic cell. The sheep was named after Parton because the cell used in the cloning process came from a mammary gland. Scientists at the Roslin Institute reportedly joked that they could not think of a more fitting pair of glands to name the clone after. Parton said she was flattered by the tribute.
Parton revisited the breast jokes publicly in 2017 while appearing at the Emmys with her 9 to 5 co-stars Jane Fonda and Lily Tomlin. The recurring gag reflected how deliberately she controlled the conversation around her appearance.
Parton often joked that there was “a brain underneath the hair and a heart underneath the boobs”, making the point that the glamorous image was only one part of who she was. Behind it was a songwriter, performer, entrepreneur and philanthropist whose career spanned nearly six decades.
Born on January 19, 1946, in a one-room cabin in Tennessee, Parton began writing songs as a child and went on to become one of country music’s most influential figures. She is survived by her husband of nearly six decades, Carl Dean, whom she married in 1966.
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SOURCE :- TIMES OF INDIA
