Director Gia Coppola’s The Last Showgirl captures the bittersweet reality of a dreamer who has given everything to a career that will never love her back.

Pamela Anderson’s Shelley has devoted the past 30 years of her life to the Las Vegas revue Le Razzle Dazzle, a show she proudly describes as embodying “breasts and rhinestones and joy.” But as the show’s run comes to an end, Shelley is forced to confront an uncertain future, aged out of the career she so desperately loves.

Shelley is a woman out of time. From her pink Motorola Razr phone to her disbelief at the rising price of lemons, she clings to a romanticised vision of the showgirl as an ambassador of Las Vegas glamour.

But as Le Razzle Dazzle prepares to close and her co-stars, Jodie (Kiernan Shipka) and Mary-Anne (Brenda Song), audition for raunchier, neo-burlesque-inspired productions, both Shelley and the audience question whether the traditional showgirl still has a place in today’s cultural landscape.

Pamela Anderson is perfectly cast in The Last Showgirl, an intimate portrait of womanhood

The Last Showgirl explores the multifaceted nature of womanhood, offering an intimate portrait of the women of Las Vegas. It peeks into dressing rooms where, among tables scattered with false eyelashes and stray rhinestones, a performer struggles to balance single motherhood, her cultivated show community and a dream that may no longer have space for her.

Screenwriter Kate Gersten wrote The Last Showgirl after seeing the Las Vegas revue Jubilee! shortly before its closure in 2016.

As the last traditional showgirl revue on the Vegas strip, Jubilee! was a tribute to glamour and femininity. Jubilee!‘s costume designers were Bob Mackie and Pete Menefee, and their original designs also feature in the film. They’re adorned with brightly coloured feathers and shimmering rhinestones so extravagant that they once caused an international Swarovski shortage.

In The Last Showgirl, these archival Jubilee! costumes become characters in their own right. Their opulent feathers and dazzling crystals create a spectacle on screen, embodying the larger-than-life fantasy of the showgirl.

As the title card plays, we see close-ups of the craftsmanship behind the showgirl aesthetic — hands caressing plumes, rich fabrics and expanses of rhinestones.

The Pamela renaissance

The true star of the film, however, is the woman whose performance shines brighter than the crystals she is adorned in. Anderson’s portrayal of Shelley cuts to the heart of the character, imbuing her with vulnerability that transcends the glittering surface of the showgirl persona.

The Last Showgirl marks Anderson’s first leading film role since the critically panned 1996 film Barb Wire, which earned her a Golden Razzie nomination for worst actress.

The casting of Anderson as Shelley feels almost kismet. One of the most notable sex symbols of our time, Anderson has recently undergone a cultural renaissance. This has been driven by the Hulu series Pam and Tommy (2022), which focused on the nonconsensual release of Anderson and her then-partner musician Tommy Lee’s sex tape (the series was ironically made without her consent).

But also Anderson’s own work in the 2023 Netflix documentary Pamela, A Love Story and her memoir, Love, Pamela, which was released the same year.

Anderson’s status as a sex symbol frequently stripped her of autonomy. In Love, Pamela, she states that she views her multiple appearances in Playboy as “an honour”, but also acknowledges that they’ve led some to treat her without respect.

She recalls being told in a deposition regarding her sex tape that she had “no right to privacy because I’d appeared in Playboy.” Both Anderson and Shelley refuse to be shamed for embodying feminine sexuality.

Subverting the showgirl

While The Last Showgirl paints a bleak image of the future of traditional Las Vegas revue, real burlesque dancers like Dita Von Teese offer a modernised alternative. Their performances honour showgirl glamour while breaking restrictive industry norms.

In 2024, Von Teese opened her own homage to Jubilee! by featuring the revue’s original Mackie and Manefee costumes (which she lent to The Last Showgirl). Von Teese’s Las Vegas revue features a diverse cast of showgirls, challenging stereotypes of gender, thinness and youth.

Performing at 52 — a similar age to Shelley — Von Teese invited 63-year-old retired showgirl Paula Nyland to perform on stage in the latest season of the Netflix show, Queer Eye. On the show, she explains: “We have to evolve and change and get rid of some of the unpleasant rules like height requirements, age requirements… I look to women older than me that can be examples of beauty and glamour.”

Perhaps, we could imagine an alternate timeline, where Shelley finds a new home in Von Teese’s modernised showgirl revue, one that honours the glamour of the past while embracing a more inclusive future.

While The Last Showgirl paints a melancholic portrait of an ageing performer left behind by a changing industry, performers like Von Teese suggest that the showgirl can evolve rather than disappear. In a different version of Shelley’s story, she might have found a stage where rhinestones still sparkle, but the rules no longer dictate who gets to wear them.

The writer is a PhD Candidate at the Centre for Women’s Studies at the University of York in the UK

Republished from The Conversation

Published in Dawn, ICON, February 23rd, 2025