Singer Shania Twain has revealed that she would flatten and try to hide her breasts while growing up to avoid sexual abuse from her stepfather, Jerry Twain.
In an interview with The Sunday Times, the 57-year-old singer said she suffered sexual and physical abuse at the hands of her stepfather, and tried changing her appearance to prevent it.
“I hid myself and I would flatten my boobs,” the “Man! I Feel Like a Woman!” singer said. “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.”
Those experiences shaped her even as she begun her singing career in her early twenties.
“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 s—ty to be a girl. Oh, it’s so s—ty to have boobs.’ I was ashamed of being a girl.”
She continued, “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 for other people was so scary for me. I felt exploited, but I didn’t have a choice now.
“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.”
The star soon found success and became able to manage her own expectations, as she signed to a label in Nashville and met her future producer and first husband Robert “Mutt” Lange.
“By the time I had my record contracts I was the kind of woman that … when I walked in the room, it’s like, don’t even get any closer,” she told The Sunday Times. “It was clear in my body language. And I think maybe what young girls can learn too is to exude that confidence.”
