Hundreds of people gathered at San Francisco’s Union Square on Friday to celebrate Dolly Parton Day.<\/p>\n
Sept. 25, or 9\/25, was dubbed Dolly Parton Day in cities across America.<\/p>\n
In San Francisco, the celebration featured blonde wigs, pink sparkles and fans channeling their inner Dolly.<\/p>\n
“It’s really especially good when you’re a middle-aged woman and you kinda get to that point where you feel a little bit invisible,” Santa Cruz resident Robin Searles said. “Then you throw this bad boy on and you are no longer invisible.”<\/p>\n
Several people also competed in the first-ever Dolly Parton Day look-alike contest. Even a parakeet joined in, wearing a hot pink hat.<\/p>\n
Oakland resident Linda Dardarian said she doesn’t know anyone who doesn’t like Parton.<\/p>\n
“In such divisive times, it’s almost miraculous that one person can have so much crossover appeal,” Dardarian said. “And I think it’s because of her love and positivity.”<\/p>\n
The celebration also included firsthand stories from a man who drove Parton’s limousine around San Francisco, a “Tonight Show” musician who met her several times and an anthropologist who teaches a college course on Dolly-ology.<\/p>\n
“I think it’s really inspiring for students right now in this day and age when they’re being pulled in so many directions, when social media wants them to be A, B and C, they look at Dolly and say, I can be who I want to be,” Indiana University anthropologist Sarah Phillips said.<\/p>\n
The San Francisco Public Library also participated as a partner of Dolly Parton’s Imagination Library.<\/p>\n
People can donate to help fund the program, and parents can sign up their children to receive free books through the project.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Hundreds of people gathered at San Francisco’s Union Square on Friday to celebrate Dolly Parton Day. Sept. 25,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":475822,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[30],"tags":[101,103,102,104,106,105],"class_list":["post-475821","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-san-francisco","tag-san-francisco","tag-san-francisco-headlines","tag-san-francisco-news","tag-sf","tag-sf-headlines","tag-sf-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/475821","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=475821"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/475821\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/475822"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=475821"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=475821"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=475821"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}