Shania Twain says menopause changed the way she saw her body, and then changed how she treated it. The 60-year-old told The Sunday Times that she stopped looking in the mirror because she hated what she saw as her body changed, before later deciding to be kinder to herself.
She said menopause has been very good for her, even as she described it as a period when she lost control of her body. Twain said she was bloating and could not simply lose five pounds, which pushed her toward unhealthy weight-loss habits that she now rejects. In her telling, the turnaround came not from a quick fix but from accepting that the fight to stay thin was making things worse.
Twain said she began cutting fats and sugars from her diet and exercising vigorously in an effort to combat the change. But she said she was doing very unhealthy things, working her body more than she was feeding it and becoming malnourished just to stay thinner. She said the strain made her thigh injury worse and slowed her recovery, a reminder that the methods she chose were not helping the body she was trying to control.
That is the friction inside her account: menopause was, in her words, good for her, but only after a period when she felt she had lost control and reacted by punishing herself. Twain said she no longer hides from the mirror. Now, she said, she wants to look at herself all day long. The shift places her squarely in a wider conversation about menopause and body image, one that has also helped fuel interest in moments ranging from Shania Twain’s past performances to the reaction around related coverage such as Ella Langley Shania Twain Cover Goes Viral With Twain’s Response.
What Twain leaves unresolved is not whether her body changed, but how many women will recognize the same pressure to answer those changes with restriction and overexercise. Her own answer is clear enough: the health scare was not the hormones alone, but the way she tried to fight them.
