The Last Showgirl

 

“The Last Showgirl” 

There’s been a lot of noise lately about Pamela Anderson showing up to events without make-up - and because she was once the iconic 𝐵𝑎𝑦𝑤𝑎𝑡𝑐ℎ 𝑏𝑙𝑜𝑛𝑑𝑒, it’s being treated like some kind of cultural shockwave. Which, in itself, says so much about how obsessed we still are with keeping people in tidy boxes. Once a sex symbol, always a sex symbol - no room for depth, self-reflection, or change. And when someone does break out of that mold, we treat it like an unexpected event rather than the obvious truth: that people are always more than one thing.

I believe we’re all multilayered, often carrying sides of ourselves we don’t even recognize - until someone, or something, calls them to the surface. "The Last Showgirl" feels like one of those rare mainstream films that dares to acknowledge this. 

There have been other films that orbit this theme - Cher’s sweet, glimmering fairy tale "Burlesque", or the infamous and brutal "Showgirls" (controversial, yes, but I still think it showed the industry as it is - or close enough). But "The Last Showgirl" isn’t trying to dazzle or shock. It’s here to tell a story - of a woman who devoted her life to what she saw as her art. Who built meaning into every step on stage, every costume, every movement. And who now has to face being pushed out of it all. Because she got “too old”.

Pamela Anderson and Jamie Lee Curtis are both fantastic here. Curtis, in particular, is gloriously exaggerated, caricatured even and yet there’s something brutally true about her, especially when the lights start dimming on the world she once ruled.

Anderson’s Sheila is, perhaps, “the last showgirl” in the truest sense. She sees her work as part of a legacy - not a strip show, not cheap sex, but an art form with roots, elegance, and a certain Parisian dignity. The scene where she dances, no make-up, her face naked, her fingers delicate and precise - it went straight to my heart. The world may try to label her as “the silly, naive, once-beautiful blonde” but in that moment she’s utterly real.

And when she says she gave everything - even her time with her daughter - for her passion, I felt that deep in my bones. Artists live with that tension. They often question the meaning of what we do:

Maybe I should stop. Spend more time with my family. Work in that supermarket. Maybe what I call art is a whim, a selfish indulgence.Maybe I’m making a mistake.

Especially in a world that still, so gladly, casts women in roles of wife and mother - as if that’s all we’re meant to be. When a woman tries to be more, to create, to live differently - she risks being seen as frivolous, irresponsible, even a bad mother. Sheila’s story raises those questions head-on:

Was my art worth it? Did it mean anything? Did I fail? Or was I just never allowed to believe I could be more than someone’s past desire?

And then there’s the blunt ageism. Men telling her she’s too old. That she’s only ever been her body. That now - with time catching up - she’s lost her worth. That she should have done something “smart” instead. Something stable. Something dull.

All those voices. All that pressure. And still, she walks through Las Vegas - a city of lights and kitsch statues - looking at it anew, no longer a part of its pulse. Dancing quietly, trying to find her footing again.

There’s so much honesty in this film. It’s not hysterical, not overly “artsy, just… true. And that makes it stand out. Not just because former C.J. Parker wears no make-up.

But because she, for once, gets to be whole.

Highly recommended.