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Dita Von Teese is, as I would like to describe her, a "Glam Club Feature Performer" who exhumes her archetype from a Vaudeville grave, gives it a Brazilian wax and repackages it for the Instagram age. She is the living definition of the bit. Her entire persona is a feature act. It's not just the burlesque; it's the commitment to a curated version of glamour. The hair is always a perfect black wave, the lipstick is a weaponized shade of red and the gowns look like they'd rather be attending a MET Gala in 1947 than being touched by human hands.

I almost called her a "whore", but out of respect for actual prostitutes and avoid moralizing about sex, I chose not to. You can do whatever you want with your body—bless you, queen, go forth and multiply (or not). What I am here to dissect—like a particularly angry frog in biology class—is the archetype and the real-life entertainers who represent that archetype so well. The tired, overused, Hollywood-approved (or in this case, Hell-adjacent-approved) trope of the "whore" as a character archetype or as a marketing brand, not a lifestyle. I've got more respect for real-life strippers and prostitutes who are (or were) capable of running a clean operation than I do for Dita. Those women are providing a service and being entrepreneurial... and well, many of them need money, or they realize that the world economy is shit, or they want autonomy and sexual exploration without treating the objectification of women as a rebellious hobby. Because it isn't. Because they know better.

Von Teese's persona is a narrative shortcut, a cheap piece of set dressing. She exists solely as a catalyst for her audience's story. Many performers in the entertainment and sex industries, no matter how different they may truly be, are either the tragic backstory—the poor sap's girlfriend who "fell in the wrong crowd" to make him sad—or they're the sassy, heart-of-gold plot devices who exist to give the gruff detective a crucial clue before being unceremoniously murdered to raise the stakes. Their entire personalities are woven from fishnet stockings and a fatalistic sigh. They have no agency, no history, no desires beyond a vague wish to maybe get out of the business someday (a wish you always conveniently grant via a bullet to the head).

It's so uncreative that it's physically painful. I see your "seductive-but-doomed" dame in a noir film, and I don't see a person; I see a writer who gave up. I see a director who couldn't think of a more interesting way to move the plot along than to trot out a woman whose only purpose is to be corrupted and then disposed of. You've taken a concept with complexity—a person navigating sex, power, money and survival on their own terms—and flattened it into a single, pathetic trope.

And let’s talk about the "heart of gold" nonsense. Why does she need a heart of gold to be sympathetic? Why must her inherent value be tied to a secret, hidden purity? It's a pathetic attempt to have your cake and eat it too. You want the edgy, risqué flavor of her profession but you're too cowardly to portray a woman who might actually be good at her job without apologizing for it. You can't fathom a woman who owns her sexuality without being a victim or a villainess.

A lot of women are pretty damn good at their jobs, even if they hate most of the clients. They aren't expected to have a "heart of gold". They are expected me to have a working knowledge of sex work and to stop people from wasting their time. Their value isn't in their potential for redemption or their hidden purity; it's in their ability to get shit done, even if that "shit" is throwing a raging hell-royal out of the office. For all their sins (and they have many, it's kind of their thing), they have dimension. They're allowed to be messy, ugly, "selfish" (try figuring that out yourself) and still be the protagonists of their own stories. They aren't archetypes; they're people. Deeply, profanely, hilariously flawed people.

Your archetype is not just boring; it's dangerous. It teaches audiences that women who operate outside a very narrow boundary of sexual propriety are narrative cannon fodder. Their purpose is to be used, pitied and then removed. It tells young women that if they are sexual, if they are cynical, if they are sharp-edged and world-weary, their only narrative worth is as a cautionary tale or a stepping stone for a man.

So, do better, Hollywood. Or, and I’m being completely sincere here, go to Hell. Take a field trip. I’ll even get you a visitor’s pass. Come see what real, messy, unapologetic characters look like. You might just learn that a woman can be more than just a trope waiting for a punchline or a bullet. She can be the one loading the gun.

Now here's the twist you'll appreciate: Von Teese's act is a monument to effortlessness that requires a frankly obscene amount of effort. She's not just "glamorous"; she's a CEO of Glamour Inc. Every public appearance, every photoshoot, is a feature performance. She is on the rotating stage of her own life, and we, the audience, are just lucky to be allowed to buy a ticket. She's what every club owner wishes their headliner could be: a profit-generator. And it's exhausting to even think about it. The more alluring, the worse.

Dita Von Teese is, by any measure, someone who has sculpted herself into an icon of retro-glamour with the precision of a watchmaker, an Art Deco figurine who never has a hair—or a sequin—out of place. She has built an empire on a polished vision of sexuality, one that is safe. And therein lies the heart of my grievance. Dita Von Teese has not resurrected the art of the striptease. She has successfully corporatized it, sanding down its edges until it became a lifestyle product.

Her genius lies in herrebranding of rebellion into a revenue stream. The original burlesque performers—the true icons like Gypsy Rose Lee or Tempest Storm—operated on the fringes. They were subversive, not just because they took their clothes off, but because they did so with a wink that was often laced with a sense of working-class defiance. It was a world of smoky rooms. In other words, it was messy. Ironic. Dangerous.

Dita has taken that messiness, placed it in a sterile, climate-controlled display case and slapped a barcode on it. Her world is not one of smoky rooms but of sold-out, thousand-seat theatres where the champagne flows at $300 a bottle. The danger has been replaced with decorum. The subversion has been supplanted by a corporate strategy that could be taught at Wharton. This isn't a revival; it's a takeover. She hasn't brought back the striptease; she's franchised it.

Her entire operation is a case study in modern corporate synergy. The "product" is Dita herself: an image of vintage femininity. But the product line is endless. You can't just enjoy her performance; you are invited to buy into the brand. You can wear her lipstick ("Von Teese"), strap on her perfume ("Rouge"), sip her branded cocktail from her branded coupe glass and read her book on "Your Beauty Mark" to learn how to achieve her look—a look that requires a small fortune in waist cinchers, false eyelashes and enough hairspray to deplete the ozone layer. She has't demystified burlesque; she has monetized every mystique.

This corporatization extends to the affair of the performance, as well as the performance itself. Her famous martini glass routine is less about seduction and more about hydrodynamics and core strength. It is impressive in the way a complex gymnastics routine is impressive. One watches it with a detached appreciation for the engineering, not with shared intimacy or transgression. The grit has been polished away, leaving only the surface. It is burlesque as envisioned by a Fortune 500 CEO.

The most insidious part of her risk-averse, corporate-friendly feminism is the rhetoric of "empowerment" that is used to sell it all. Dita posits her version of sexuality as the ultimate feminist act. The message is: "I am empowered because I choose to perform a hyper-feminine, male-gazey ideal, and I am selling it back to you at a premium." It's a closed loop where criticism is deflected by the shield of "choice", ignoring the fact that her choice now functions as the new gilded cage. It suggests that the path to empowerment is not through dismantling beauty standards, but through mastering them with an exhausting, full-time-job level of commitment. It's not "you are beautiful as you are"; it's "you, too, can be beautiful if you buy these specific products and dedicate 90 minutes daily to your victory rolls".

This creates a bizarre form of liberation. It is so oppressive that rebellion is no longer against the system, but within it. You're not smashing the patriarchy; you're out-spending it. It's a deeply corporate feminism that tells women their power is not collective, but purchasable. Your rebellion is waiting at the checkout counter.

And let's talk about the audience. The original burlesque was a dialogue, a charged exchange of energy between a performer who was often in control of a rowdy, unpredictable room. Dita's performance is a monologue delivered from behind a velvet rope. The audience is not a crowd; they are consumers, there to quietly appreciate the brand experience. They have paid top dollar for their seat and their champagne flute, and they will behave with the appropriate decorum. The anarchic spirit of the cabaret has been gentrified.

In the end, my criticism of Dita Von Teese is about both the cultural narrative that surrounds her and the person—she is a talentless and disrespectful businesswoman who did very little to build her empire from the ground up, and she is anything but an icon. No point in tipping my hat to that.