In early September, the world lost two feminist icons, Dolly Parton and Gloria Steinem, and the internet has been full of posthumous praise. My personal tribute pales in comparison to the recollections of those who knew them personally, but sadly, I never had the honor. I grew up imprinted with their images and ideas: Gloria in aviators and jeans, Dolly in rhinestones and impossible hair. Whether I realized it or not, my life was better because of both.

When I was one month old, in December 1971, Ms. Magazine debuted, and Steinem, Betty Friedan, Shirley Chisholm, and others founded The National Women’s Political Caucus the same year.

In 1971, Dolly Parton was on the cusp of her own debut. With the release of her first solo #1 country single, Joshua, and after following up with Coat of Many Colors, she was on her way to becoming the Dolly we’d all know and love.

In the first decade of my life, things were looking up for American women. We had Title IX (1972); Roe v Wade (1973); the Equal Credit Opportunity Act, which permitted women to have a checking account or credit card on their own (1974); and at the dawn of a new decade in 1980, Dolly appeared in the movie 9-to-5 as Doralee, a secretary who worked with Lily Tomlin and Jane Fonda. These three feminist icons literally took over a business and demonstrated that women could, and should, run all the things.

I saw this film when I was far too young to understand many of the adult themes (it was the time of inappropriate movie viewing for many of my peers), but what I took away was that women should be in charge. Throughout my life, this deeply held foundation of my consciousness has been met with its share of evidence to the contrary.

As a girl, I was told not to be “so aggressive,” while the same behavior in boys was called leadership. I once lost a job opportunity to a man because “he had a family.” Years later, when I bought my first home as a single woman, I had to sign a form declaring myself a “Spinster.” And later still, I was laid off while a male colleague was retained because he had a wife to support.

For all the progress promised to my generation, the old rules had a surprisingly long shelf life.

But this is supposed to be about fashion, and that’s where Dolly and Gloria come back in.

Both were beautiful women by any conventional measure, and both understood that when a woman steps into public life, what she wears enters the room before she does. But they approached that fact from opposite ends of the closet.

Gloria Steinem, with her center-parted long hair, classic aviator glasses, jeans, and boots, looked like a woman with no intention of dressing herself into the establishment she was trying to change. Dolly, meanwhile, leaned so hard into femininity that she practically bedazzled it: big hair, high heels, rhinestones, tiny waists and plunging necklines. She once famously described her look as inspired by the “town tramp,” the woman everyone else considered cheap but whom young Dolly thought was beautiful.

Dolly also famously said, “I’m not offended by all the dumb blonde jokes because I know I’m not dumb, and I’m not blonde either.” In a 2026 Allure article, Steinem said, “The more we’re valued for our accomplishments and not for our looks, the better.”

One icon pared away the traditional costume of respectable womanhood. The other turned it up until the dial broke.

Somehow, both were saying the same thing: I’ll decide what I look like, and you don’t get to decide what that says about what I’m capable of.

That sounds simple enough. More than fifty years later, it still isn’t.

Women of my generation have choices our mothers did not. We can wear the pants or the rhinestones. We can color our hair or let it go gray, wear the heels or throw them out, get Botox or embrace every line, dress to be noticed or dress to disappear. Still, somehow, every one of those choices can become evidence in a case we never agreed to stand trial for.

Too sexy to be taken seriously. Too serious to be sexy. Too young for that. Too old for this. Trying too hard. Letting herself go.

Maybe the freedom was never in finding the right way to look. Maybe it was in refusing to believe there was one.

I was one month old when Ms. first appeared, entering a world in which women were beginning, in earnest, to insist that we be allowed to define our own lives. I have benefited from that insistence every day since, even on the days when the progress has felt painfully incomplete.

Now Dolly and Gloria are gone, and perhaps this is the part that belongs to us.

Gloria said, “I’ve never said to myself ‘I feel ugly’ or 'I feel beautiful.' You look in the mirror, and you want to look like yourself. That’s enough."

So we persist. Not to dress like them. Not to become them.

But to keep insisting on the thing they modeled so beautifully:

You get to decide who you are.

And then you get dressed.