Four days after Dolly Parton died, Bill Maher listed the tributes to her on his show — London lit up, hearts on the Santa Monica Ferris wheel, the Empire State Building in pink — and then ended on the Sphere in Las Vegas, adding a nipple. The audience applauded.The narrative taking shape this week is that Dolly was in on it. She made men the butt of the joke. She got there first, every time, so it never really landed on her.She did get there first. She spent 60 years being funnier about her own body than anyone else in the room. People asked her about it, and she always had a line ready — she knew the best Dolly jokes because she’d made them up herself. We took that as the end of the conversation. I never believed it.Parton was one of the finest Americans of my lifetime, and we made her a punchline. I was probably about 7 years old when I first heard a joke about the singer. “Why can’t Dolly Parton go jogging? Because she would get two black eyes.” Years later I saw her tell it herself on Twitter. She had taken the joke we made about her body and made it hers, and she did it so well I forgot it was ever ours.Dumb blonde. Bimbo. Nothing above the neck worth mentioning. I heard those jokes. I told those jokes.What were we laughing at? Her hair, her eyelashes, her nails, her chest — every item a marker of femininity. That was the crime. She was too much of a woman, out loud and on purpose. Femininity is fine as long as it stays quiet and accidental; announce it and you become the joke.I know that tension from the inside. As a doctoral student and a new professor, I wore pants, button-down shirts, and leather loafers I never felt like myself in. Now, tenured, you are most likely to find me in a dress, with makeup, lashes, and accessories that match. That is me.Last year I was at a work event in a silk dress I love. Someone asked to take a photo with me, and we posed for four or five. I didn’t think about it again until I was scrolling through my camera roll the next day. In the first two photos, we’re both looking at the camera. In the third one, he’s looking at my chest. Then he’s looking at the camera again.That was one evening, and I only noticed because of the photo. Parton dealt with that for six decades, but she always had a joke ready, so nobody else would have to feel awkward.A friend told me her daughter had said she admired that I was feminine and scholarly, and that she liked seeing the two in one person. A college student in 2026 still found that combination remarkable enough to mention it to her mother. Parton worked this out in public, and much earlier. She looked exactly like herself from the start and never once apologized for it. She wrote thousands of songs, bought back her own music, and built an empire in an industry that assumed she was purely decoration.Then she spent it. Tens of millions of free books mailed to children who had none. A million dollars into vaccine research at a time when there was no clear end in sight to the COVID pandemic. Decades of standing with the LGBTQ+ community. She could have died far richer. She chose not to.We live in a moment when it seems as though public figures accumulate everything and give back nothing. Parton was quietly building a moral record almost none of us could match, and she did it in rhinestones, while we laughed.We have had this conversation before, but only when a woman breaks. Britney Spears fell apart in public, and the whole country suddenly wanted to talk about what we do to girls. It took a woman shattering for us to look in the mirror. Dolly never shattered. She died wealthy, beloved, and wildly accomplished, and because she left us no visible wreckage, we have never had to admit anything.But the debt is the same. She was owed better whether or not the cruelty broke her. And since we cannot pay it to her now, we must pay it to the girls coming up behind her.I am the mother of daughters, so I pay attention to the deal we are still offering girls. Be pretty, but not on purpose. Be feminine, but apologize for it. Be strong, but stay small enough that nobody feels threatened. You should not have to be ruined before anyone notices you were treated badly. And you should not have to make yourself smaller, plainer, quieter, or less feminine, to be taken seriously.We laughed at Dolly Parton for being a woman. She controlled the joke for 60 years, and it outlived her anyway. That is not a happy ending. That is a bill we still owe.Michelle Benegas, Ph.D., is a writer and associate professor at Hamline University in Saint Paul, Minnesota, where she prepares teachers to work with multilingual students. She began her career teaching newly arrived immigrant teenagers, lobbied for Minnesota legislation on language access, and served as a U.S. Department of State English Language Specialist in Bahrain. She is the author of two books on language and education and the mother of three daughters.Do you have a compelling personal story you’d like to see published on HuffPost? Find out what we’re looking for here and send us a pitch at pitch@huffpost.com.