Still The One

Country music’s queen of catsuits Shania Twain on finding her femininity

- Sarah Cristobal

I did not feel beautiful as a child. I wasn’t blessed with prettiness. Maybe it had something to do with the fact that we were poor and moved around a lot, or that my mother kept my hair short, but I was always mistaken for a boy. I wanted to wear pants and go hunting with my dad, while my two sisters wore dresses and were fair, blond, and a lot cuter.

Even in high school, when my body was developing and all the curves came in, I didn’t get a sense of my femininity. I wasn’t ready for the changes, and I didn’t enjoy them. I didn’t accept who I was until I was out of high school and starting to wear stage clothes. I started recognizing that, “Oh, I’m the girl in the band. Maybe I am supposed to wear makeup and style my hair.”

It took the pressure of entertainment life to make me accept my femininity. I didn’t have a daily routine for beautifying until I was 21 and needed to wear long gowns, high heels, false eyelashes, and lots of makeup as a front woman. The dancers would give me high-heel-walking lessons during the day. It was hard and I would think, “How am I ever going to sing and wear high heels at the same time?”