As she prepares to embark on a new musical era, Shania Twain is taking time to reflect on the personal pain of her past in retrospect.
Speaking to the Sunday Times, the five-time Grammy winner recalled the sexual and physical abuse she suffered at the hands of her stepfather, Jerry, and said she altered her appearance as a coping mechanism.
“I was hiding and flattening my breasts,” Twain said. “I wore bras that were too small for me and wore two, got rid of them until there was nothing feminine about me. Make it easier to go unnoticed. Because, God, it was awful, you didn’t want to be a girl in my house.”
Jerry adopted Twain, along with his two sisters, when he was 4 years old. He and Sharon, Twain’s mother, died in a car accident in 1987.
Although Twain initially found solace in music, she said she initially struggled to embrace her sexuality as she began to pursue a songwriting career.
“I was ashamed to be a girl,” she said. “All of a sudden it was like, ‘Well, what’s your problem?’ You know, you’re a woman and you have this beautiful body? What was so natural to others was so scary to me. I felt taken advantage of, but I had no choice now. I had to play the glamorous singer, I had to wear my femininity more openly or more freely. And find out how I will not be tempted, or violated by someone’s eyes, and feel so degraded.”
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Twain previously spoke about her stepfather’s abuse in her 2011 memoir, From This Moment On. And on 60 Minutes Australia in 2017, she recalled the times she had to step in between her parents to support her mother.
“Sometimes I got physically involved in my parents’ fights because I thought he would kill [my mom]” he said. “One of these times, he’s going to kill her.”
As 2022 draws to a close, Twain is on the verge of a professional renaissance. In September, he unveiled “Waking Up Dreaming,” his first new single in five years. He will appear in Disney’s live-action special, “Beauty and the Beast: A 30th Celebration,” which will air later this month on ABC.
She is also set to release her sixth studio album, Queen of Me, early next year before embarking on a world tour.
“I’m really excited to cheer people up,” she told The Sun this fall. “We had a really productive songwriting spree and as isolated as we were, I wanted to cheer myself up and that came out in the music.”
