TLDR
Shania Twain says her 2019 Las Vegas residency pushed her into “unhealthy” habits, leaving her malnourished as she chased a thinner body, before menopause forced a powerful reset.
The woman whose leopard-print catsuits defined late-1990s country-pop glamour is pulling back the curtain on what it cost to keep that image alive under the Vegas lights. In a new interview with the Times, Shania Twain recalls turning on herself backstage, doing “very unhealthy things” to keep her body smaller while trying to power through a high-octane residency.
The five-time Grammy winner says it began with something familiar to many women in midlife. Her routines stayed the same, but her body did not. Twain explained that she suddenly began to bloat and felt a loss of control over her weight. As she told the outlet, she found that she could no longer casually drop “five pounds” before stepping into a costume.
That loss of control hit her hardest in front of the mirror. “I stopped looking at myself in the mirror. I hated my body,” she said, describing a period when even catching her own reflection felt unbearable. For a star whose image has long been part of her power, that admission lands with particular weight.
Instead of easing up, Twain pushed harder. She described a punishing equation under the stage lights of her 2019 Las Vegas run. “I was working my body more than I was feeding it to keep up with the strain,” she shared. The goal, she said, was simple and relentless. She wanted “to be thinner.”
The cost of that choice was steep. Twain says the imbalance left her “malnourished” and contributed to her injuring herself onstage. It is a jarring image for fans who remember the empowered swagger of “Man! I Feel Like A Woman!” and the romantic optimism of “You’re Still The One”. Behind the hits, there was a woman quietly at war with the body that helped build her legend.
Twain, now 60, credits menopause with forcing a different kind of reckoning. Instead of fighting every physical change, she began to release control. “Now I’m like, bring on the mirrors, I’m going to look at myself all day long!” she told the Times. “Menopause has been very good for me because I’ve learned that some things you cannot control.”
That shift has been visible in her career choices too. In 2022, Twain posed topless from the waist up, covered strategically, for the artwork of her single “Waking Up Dreaming”. She called showing off her “new body” as she ages “liberating” and framed the image as a declaration of self-acceptance. “This is me expressing my truth. I’m comfortable in my own skin, and this is the way I am sharing that confidence,” she said at the time.
For an artist whose catalog often soundtracked divorce recoveries, reinventions, and second acts, this chapter fits her legacy. The Vegas residency demanded she shrink herself. Menopause and experience seem to have had the opposite effect, expanding her relationship with her own reflection. The sequins are still there. The story she is telling about the woman inside them has changed.
Do Shania Twain’s reflections on aging, menopause, and body image change how you see those glittering Vegas years, or do they mirror your own story in the mirror?
