Shania Twain has revealed that she used to flatten her breasts as a young girl to avoid being sexually abused by her stepfather.
The 57-year-old country icon bravely opened up about her traumatic childhood in Ontario, Canada, where she lived with her four siblings, her mother Sharon, and stepfather Jerry Twain.
Twain - who has previously spoken up about the abuse she suffered at the hands of her stepfather during her upbringing - has now disclosed the lengths she took to go "unnoticed" in her house.
During an interview with Sunday Times, the 'You're Still The One' hitmaker revealed that growing up, she tried to change the way she looked so that she could avoid getting any attention from her late stepdad.
"I hid myself and I would flatten my boobs. 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," Twain said. "Because, oh my gosh, it was terrible - you didn’t want to be a girl in my house."
The musician - whose parents both died in a car crash when she was 21 - went on to explain that she also struggled with the way she was treated as a woman as she grew older and left her family household.
"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. So then you think, 'Oh, I guess it’s just s****y to be a girl,' 'Oh, it’s so s****y to have boobs.' I was ashamed of being a girl," she added.
In 2018, the 'From This Moment On' singer reflected on the devastating abuse she experienced as a child during an interview with The Guardian.
"Uh huh, uh huh. I’m not going to go into details about it. I don’t mind saying it, because I do think it’s important that people understand you can survive these things," she said at the time.
Twain divulged that the abuse started when she was just 10 years old and that she didn’t want to speak up at the time as the truth would have broken her family apart.
"I feel the sexual abuse goes hand in hand with the physical and psychological abuse when it’s somebody you know. I learned to block it out.
"Abusers need to manipulate you, whether it’s before or after, and what I said to myself is: 'OK, there’s something wrong with this person and that person is not well,'" she said.
Discussing why she didn’t report her stepdad, the Grammy-winning star explained: "I did feel sorry for myself a lot as a kid. It was either go to Children’s Aid and get saved now.
"I weighed it up and thought: 'If I go to Children’s Aid, we’ll all get separated,' and I just couldn’t bear that, so we all stayed together for better or for worse," she added.
