Leah Elisabeth flipped her fiery red curls over her shoulder and tugged on the top of her rhinestone bustier. Her padded stool clunked over wooden floors as she wheeled around the small studio above Lipstick Lounge in East Nashville.
It's a far cry from the lifestyle she experienced growing up. Raised in a religious Williamson County household, Elisabeth wasn't allowed much secular music.
"But we were allowed to listen to Dolly Parton," she said.
Despite her appearance, Parton was wholesome in the way she carried herself and spoke. Her way of life — kindness, unapologetic confidence, and her glitzy business acumen — stuck with Elisabeth.
"It was like okay, I guess, to have a big mouth and big hair and be a little extra and loud," she said. "Her
whole deal with 'I want to be the town tramp' and the big acrylic nails and all the things that some other women or people would kind of poo-poo on and be snotty about, but if Dolly did it, it was cool."
Christin Baumgart, the "petal" to Elisabeth's "fang" of Petal & Fang Tattoo, pulled out sheets of cling wrap and diligently covered her tray table and tools as clients buzzed in a small parlor room next door.
Parton died Aug. 25after a short, private battle with cancer. The news shook Nashville and fans across the world. Major network media companies cut into their broadcasts to announce Parton's death. Her funeral was reserved for family and close friends only.
Fans looked for an outlet to publicly mourn the "Queen of Country Music." They placed flowers outside her Brentwood home, surrounded her plaque on the Music City Walk of Fame while homemade memorials popped up across town.
Others chose to carry their grief permanently.
Baumgart and Elisabeth prepped for a full day of tattooing Sept. 4, all in honor of Parton. All to give a little back to the Imagination Library, the singer's literary endeavor that provided books to newborns until they turned 5.
"She was a saint," Baumgart said. "She was a feminist icon for a lot of us. Dolly was a bad bitch, and we want to honor her by all the other bad bitches getting Dolly tattoos together."
"W.W.D.D.?"
Inking grief on skin has long been part of how people process loss.
One study showed memorial tattooscan serve vital functions in the grief process. They can become a physical representation of the memorialized person, they help people carry memories forever and they can also serve as a way to start conversations about the person who died.
It wasn't long after the news spread of Parton's death that the call went out on the East Nashville Facebook page for artists who could squeeze people in for memorial tattoos.
Baumgart and Elisabeth quickly got to work, drawing up small designs, known as flash, for a special rate.
"The outcry for tattoos following her death was so immediate," Baumgart said. "Everyone was wanting tattoos and we really just wanted to be able to give people that, but also give them a chance to give back to one of her charities."
The flash sheet offered about 20 designs including butterflies, Parton's logo, a Smoky Mountain landscape and a lace bra cradling voluptuous peaches. And when a client couldn't decide, they offered "W.W.D.D." because it's always a good idea to pause and wonder "what would Dolly do?"
"We just tried to think of things that were important to Dolly and Tennessee and Nashville in general," Baumgart said.
What Dolly Parton meant to them
The narrow hallway between the waiting parlor and the studio at Petal & Fang filled with women as they passed a clipboard down the row to sign up. They whispered with strangers in line next to them, sometimes solidifying their decision about what to permanently affix to their skin based on the opinion of someone they had just met.
They poured personal pieces of themselves out in idle chatter as they collectively reminisced about Parton.
Some grew up listening to Parton, others were mothers deeply thankful for the singer's book program. One was a teacher in town from Southern Indiana for cancer treatments, and another was a recent graduate with a degree in library sciences.
But it was Derrek Kupish who was first in line, using his lunch break to get a tattoo. Elisabeth lined up Dolly's script logo on his left forearm, next to Naomi Judd's signature music note tattooed on his wrist.
Kupish worked for both singers during his career in music management and photography, specifically working with Parton for five years. He now does social media work for Billy Ray Cyrus.
"Dolly touched so many people, and I just wanted to honor her and have it be a part of me, since it was a part of my career and my life for about five years," he said. "She was so positive, always had something smart, but witty and fun to say."
As Kupish lay on his back, arm outstretched, with Elisabeth leaning over it, Baumgart was on the opposite side of the room lining up a stencil under the crook of Deighton Heath's right elbow. Heath chose an open book with a rainbow arched over.
Heath has a 4-year-old son.
Living in Oklahoma at the time of his birth, Heath strategized to sign their son up using a relative's address in Tennessee, then having the books shipped to Oklahoma. They didn't end up needing that contingency plan. The Oklahoma State Department of Education expanded the program to all 77 counties in May 2022.
"Books were a huge escape for me as a kid, and now I have a son, and he gets these books and has his entire life," Heath said. "I think it speaks volumes that this has left such a huge mark on him, that at 4, he loves books, libraries and he knows that Dolly Parton had a hand in that."
This article originally appeared on Nashville Tennessean: What would Dolly do? Nashvillians find answers in tattoos
