***The Year’s Work in*** **Showgirls* ** ** Studies*** **is a fan culture volume that deconstructs how and why* ** ** Showgirls*** **, a 1995 drama with a female lead bent on becoming a famous performer in Las Vegas, became a much-contested cult film despite being a critical failure when it released.** The collection orchestrates a conversation between scholarly essay work and archival documentation offering a magnificent representation of the array of responses generated by the film, its makers, its promoters, and its audience. A multifaceted approach to the film, its popularity, and its social relevance results in a new text for understanding normative social hierarchies of sexuality, race, and gender. *The Year’s Work in* Showgirls *Studies* engages with the figurative and actual place of sex work and feminized affective labor in our society.