The Last Showgirl: Inevitable Obsolence or Revenge of the Crones?

Much has been said of The Last Showgirl, and Pamela Anderson’s turn as Shelly, a 56-year-old showgirl coming to terms with the abrupt cancellation of The Razzle Dazzle, the revue she has been dancing in for 37 years. The words "brave", "powerful" and "authentically moving" were used, along with "vapid" and "disappointingly tasteful".

While The Last Showgirl is all of these things, one could also add "gentle". Nothing truly awful nor violent happens to Shelly in Gia Coppola’s latest movie. Her world crumbles gradually, as the extent of her denial gets revealed one micro-humiliation at a time, culminating in an annoyed comment by a casting director that Shelly must have been hired at The Razzle Dazzle all those years ago for her beauty, not her dancing skills.

He is not wrong. Over the course of the movie, we see Shelly not so much "rehearsing" dance sequences as gracefully prancing about, in stark contrast to the sexy athleticism of younger dancer Jodie (Kiernan Shipka) on the hustle for a part in a show called Hedonist Paradise. Shelly is horrified and calls it low-classy, but the issue here is not vulgarity as much as her realization that what she has to offer in her current environment is no longer of value.

Her friend Annette (played with great compassion by Jamie Lee Curtis) represents another timeline of the same story. A former showgirl turned casino waitress, Annette seems to have a better grasp of reality, and as such is at times bitter, raw, harsh yet surprisingly vulnerable. The image of her dancing by herself, eyes closed, on top of a table in the middle of a casino is almost shocking in its tenderness. This is a disappointed woman trying to find joy in a somewhat hopeless situation.

This story is familiar to any woman over the age of 40 (or is it 35?), of course. A subtle shift of available opportunities, a slight suspicion that sexism and/or ageism are at play, the gradual withdrawal of overt male attention. The drop can be steep for any woman who has been told all her life that her looks are one of the most valuable things about her, while said looks start fading faster and faster.

There is a silver lining to this, so to speak, and it is rooted in what could be called the Crone Paradox. Studies reveal that levels of happiness for women are U-shaped, with the happiest decades being their 20’s, and their 60’s. Think about “Last Fuckable Day”, the famous sketch by Amy Schumer, where Schumer, Tina Fey, and Patricia Arquette celebrate Julia Louis-Dreyfus’ recent transition into unfuckable status. "Believe me, no one was more surprised than me that they let me stay fuckable throughout my 40’s, and the fact that it continued into my 50’s is just like, thanks, Bud! " she says. When asked whether she is bummed at all, Louis-Dreyfus responds that she is thrilled, ecstatic, as she can finally let her pubes grow out and drink melted Ben and Jerry’s ice cream directly from the container.

Cue in Cat lady and knitting jokes. Or, actually, don’t. Whether it’s JLo gyrating on a dancer’s pole at the Superbowl at the venerable age of 50, or Madonna getting it on with a 28-year-old, mature women everywhere are fighting back, hard. Shelly may not have planned for the future, yet many women nowadays enter Cronehood with eyes wide open and an indominable zest for life. And that, my friends, is the real Razzle Dazzle.