Shania Twain Recounts Past Abuse and ‘Scary’ Body Exploitation as a Young Girl
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Shania Twain opened up about feeling exploited for her body as a young girl.
The insecurity stemmed from being physically and sexually abused in her home.
Now, at 57, she’s reclaiming her body and putting it on display unapologetically.
Shania Twain didn’t live an easy childhood. In a new interview with The Sunday Times, she recounted her stepfather being sexually and physically abusive, and as she explained in her documentary, Not Just a Girl, when she was in elementary and middle school, her mom would sneak her into bars to perform. Those experiences led her to feel very insecure as she grew into her teenage body, and she did everything she could to avoid being ogled.
“I hid myself and I would flatten my boobs. I would wear bras that were too small for me, and I’d wear two, play it down until there was nothing girl about me. Make it easier to go unnoticed. Because, oh my gosh, it was terrible—you didn’t want to be a girl in my house,” the singer explained.
Those fears were only exacerbated when she got older and entered the “real world.” “Then you go into society and you’re a girl and you’re getting the normal other unpleasant stuff too, and that reinforces it. So then you think, ‘Oh, I guess it’s just sh*tty to be a girl. Oh, it’s so sh*tty to have boobs.’ I was ashamed of being a girl,” she said.
At 22, Twain was forced to throw her anxieties to the side when her parents died in a car accident and she was left to care for her younger brothers. Singing—and doing so as a flashy, attractive woman—was her key to survival. And it was terrifying.
“What was so natural for other people was so scary for me. I felt exploited, but I didn’t have a choice now,” she recalled. “I had to play the glamorous singer, had to wear my femininity more openly or more freely. And work out how I’m not gonna get groped, or raped by someone’s eyes, you know, and feel so degraded.”
Eventually—and it’s safe to say her launch to superstardom helped—Twain learned how to feel more comfortable in her own skin. And now, at 57, she’s reclaiming the time she lost by embracing her sexuality, which is one of the reasons she posed nude for her upcoming album, Queen of Me.
“I was very insecure woman, girl ... I was one of those teenagers that would never wear a bikini at the beach, for example,” she recently told TalkShopLive. “So I’m saying, well, the heck with that. I didn’t do it when I was younger, so I’m going to do it now. I’m going to feel and show that I feel comfortable in my own skin.”
Queen of Me features anthems that empower Twain and her fans to unapologetically celebrate themselves. “I am celebrating escaping this horrible state of not wanting to be who I am. And I’m so confident, now that I discovered that it’s OK to be a girl,” she told The Sunday Times. “The unapologetic woman is a very powerful person indeed.”
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