21st Century Pop Reinventing the Life of a Showgirl

This article is written by a student writer from the Her Campus at Toronto MU chapter and does not reflect the views of Her Campus.

Over the years, pop stars have adopted various personas as creative blueprints to craft their unique iconography, but none have captured Hollywood’s heart quite like the “showgirl.” 

Since the 1920s, the showgirl has become a cultural symbol celebrated across the entertainment industry for its alluring fantasy of classic Hollywood glamour. However, the dazzling persona goes deeper than sequins, feathers, and fringe. It also serves to spotlight the challenging journey of reinvention and reclaiming control over self-image and career choice for female performers. 

In the wake of Taylor Swift’s 12th studio album, The Life of a Showgirl (TLOAS), released on Oct. 3, 2025, it’s time to unpack the hidden themes, narratives, and visuals behind her showgirl-coded album aesthetic.

To understand Swift’s stylistic choices, it’s important to get a glimpse behind the curtain into the historical trajectory of the performative female persona and its cultural transformation through female pop artists.

Making a Mark in Herstory

The legacy of the showgirl is laced with vibrancy and a tinge of darkness. Tracing its origins back to the mid-1700s, the term “showgirl” was used to describe a female entertainer for the male audience. They were hired by casting directors to dress in vibrant, revealing clothing while behaving in a showy, provocative manner to attract the eyes and wallets of rich, upper-class male patrons. In this light, showgirls were celebrated visually but silenced socially as stigmatized sexual objects to perform for the male gaze. 

Fast forward to the 1920s, and showgirls began to harness the power of performance through the creation of burlesque. Showgirls began utilizing their stage presence to redefine themselves as vulnerable objects of desire into female powerhouses in control of their artistic narratives. By incorporating theatrics into their risqué performances, the stage transformed into a place of creative freedom and self-expression. 

This reformed showgirl persona eventually caught on in Hollywood in the 1930s and 1940s, where film and television portrayed them as dynamic female figures exuding elegance, athleticism, and confidence on stage. Their lives were often fabricated as picture-perfect to fit the narrative idolized by the entertainment industry known as the “golden age of Hollywood.”

Hollywood’s fixation on surface-level fantasy and glamour in show business seems to overshadow the heartbreak, sadness, financial struggles and physical demands on the performer’s bodies.

However, these masked realities of the showgirl have reached the surface with more recent films such as The Last Showgirl (2024), inspired by the real-life end to the era of Las Vegas showgirls in 2016. The film stars Pamela Anderson, a former showgirl struggling to scrape by after the entertainment industry dims its lights on the Vegas showgirl scene. However, this multi-layered persona has taken centre stage again with 21st-century pop singers: the showgirls of today.

Her Pop Music Evolution

Since the early 2000s and 2010s, many pop music artists, including Beyoncé, Lady Gaga, Britney Spears, Kylie Minogue, and Sabrina Carpenter, have all referenced the showgirl archetype through their artistic projects—positioning them as modern extensions to the iconic persona.

For instance, the “character” of Lady Gaga is a showgirl persona in itself. In a recent interview with late-night talk-show host Stephen Colbert, the artist, whose real name is Stefani Germanotta, discussed how she created Lady Gaga as a suit of armour against her personal struggles with celebrity fame and to foster a more confident version of herself. 

Another example is Sabrina Carpenter, whose risqué showgirl persona has received countless criticisms for appearing to play into Hollywood’s hypersexualized image of women. However, Carpenter’s iconography mirrors a similar picture to the legacy of burlesque performers. As seen through her work on Short n’ Sweet and Man’s Best Friend, Carpenter embraces a classic Hollywood style while injecting playful humour into her performance and lyricism to subvert the male gaze into an active celebration of femininity and female pleasure.

While Swift is far from the first artist to embody the feminist archetype, her album, TLOAS, does add volume to the social commentary around modern showgirls in music. 

On Aug. 13, 2025, Swift dropped the album announcement on a special episode of the “New Heights” podcast, a sports-focused show co-hosted by her fiancé, Travis Kelce, and his brother, Jason Kelce. In the podcast, Swift mentioned how the inspiration for her new album stemmed from her life on The Eras Tour, which she described as “exuberant, electric and vibrant” both on and off-stage. 

The different album covers for TLOAS feature Swift in bejewelled bodysuits, feather headpieces and pixie-cut wigs posing against dark, faded backgrounds. Based on these visuals, Swift sets the stage for an authentic showgirl-esque theme. However, the album’s narrative appears to have a pivotal focus on Swift’s romance with Kelce rather than her navigating the radiant, yet rigorous, showgirl lifestyle.

For example, Swift’s selected album cover exhibits parallels to Ophelia, the female lead in the Shakespearean tragedy, Hamlet. The cover shows Swift covered in bling while submerged underwater. She appears to be breaking through the cracks to save herself from drowning, the tragedy Ophelia suffers in the play. The cover is a nod to the title of the album’s first track, “The Fate of Ophelia,” where she talks about how her relationship with Kelce saved her from “drowning” in heartbreak.  

Although the album addresses Swift’s connection to the showgirl through her experience dealing with public perception, it does not appear to dive enough into the complexities of the performative role. The book, Viewing Pleasure and Being a Showgirl, by independent scholar Alison Carr, addresses how modern showgirls captivate audiences with their talents and humanity by showing the labour behind the glamour. Oftentimes, this can be difficult for mainstream artists to display authentically, given their economic gain and wealth status.

In Swift’s case, her showgirl persona reads more as a campaign for her Eras Tour success and sparks-flying romance with Kelce, rather than a relatable symbol of overcoming public scrutiny and industry pressures placed on female artists.

While the showgirl lives on through 21st-century pop, Swift’s new album highlights the work still needed from contemporary artists to strip back the layers of sparkles to reveal what’s underneath the showgirl’s surface-level charm.