Of all the aphorisms uttered by Dolly Parton, the “glittery country goddess from Tennessee,” as Interview magazine called her, who died on Tuesday in Nashville, perhaps the most telling was a line she uttered as part of a David Letterman Top 10 list of pet peeves in 1995.

One of the things that most irritated her, Parton cracked, standing on a balcony in her Dollywood amusement park in a black and gold top with a keyhole neckline framing her cleavage, her hair teased into a platinum nimbus and a big grin on her face, was “Accountants who don’t understand how much it costs to make me look this cheap.”

In fact, no one understood what it took to look like Dolly Parton better than Dolly Parton or thought more about what it meant and how clothes could give character to a voice.

She may have been only five feet tall, but she made herself larger than life. In doing so, she challenged stereotypes of all kinds about women, appearance and substance with a wink, a healthy dose of self-aware irony and a refusal to apologize for what she wanted.

From the time she signed her first recording contract with Monument Records in 1965, she was inventing not only her sound but her public self: a cartoon bimbo in a giant platinum wig, six-inch heels, a push-up bra and rhinestones whom she later christened (in song) a “Backwoods Barbie.”