Shania Twain says she chose to "flatten her boobs" as a young girl in an effort to deter her physically and sexually abusive stepfather away from her.
"I hid myself," she told The Sunday Times. "Because, oh my gosh, it was terrible -- you didn’t want to be a girl in my house."
One of five siblings, the Grammy Award-winner was raised in Timmins, Ontario, Canada, by her mother Sharon and stepfather Jerry Twain, who legally adopted the children.
Twain says she feared her stepfather would kill her or her mother – igniting a will to fight back.
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She told The Sunday Times she once threw a chair at her stepfather.
"I think a lot of that was anger, not courage. And it took a long time to manage that anger. You don’t want to be somebody that attacks me on the street," she said. "because I will f---ing rip your head off if I get the chance."
Throughout the interview, Twain discussed the lengths to which she would go to conceal her womanhood.
"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," she said.
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But being a young woman proved to be difficult for Twain, regardless of the circumstances.
"But then you go into society and you’re a girl and you’re getting the normal other unpleasant stuff too, and that reinforces it," she said, of covering herself up.
"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."
In addition to the abuse she endured, Twain's childhood was relatively unconventional, with her mother bringing her to bars at just 8 years old to sing.
She recalls going on stage at midnight – when bars legally had to stop serving patrons alcohol – and being awoken mid-sleep by her mother to go perform.
At age 22, when Twain finally felt as though she was free to live without the weight of her family, her parents died in a car crash. It was then that she began to embrace her identity as a woman – knowing she had to care for her younger siblings.
"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."
