The woman who wrote “Man! I Feel Like a Woman!” doesn’t want to be called a feminist. And honestly, the way she explained it makes perfect sense.
In an interview with The Sunday Times Magazine published Saturday, Shania Twain opened up about why she doesn’t use the label, even though she’s been called one for nearly three decades.
“I don’t see myself as a feminist,” Twain said. “I see myself as a very independent thinker and not necessarily because I’m a woman.”
She wasn’t done.
“I just feel that I’m strong as a person. It’s like saying, ‘You look great for your age.’ I’m not strong for a woman. I’m not independent for a woman. I’m not self-sufficient for a woman. I just am a woman.”
That comparison to “you look great for your age” is the part that sticks. She doesn’t want a qualifier in front of her strength. She just wants to be strong, full stop. No asterisk, no category.
Shania Twain Said Vulnerable Men Deserve Protection Too
Twain then extended the same logic to men, and this is where most outlets stopped quoting her.
“And this falls on boys too. It’s like, ‘Oh, the boy needs less protection than the girl because he’s a boy.’ That is so not true, and it’s not fair. Vulnerable men need just as much protection as vulnerable women.”
Nothing about that is controversial. That’s a woman who raised herself out of poverty in a small Canadian town, survived an ex-husband’s affair with her best friend, rebuilt her entire career from the ground up, and came out the other side still believing that compassion shouldn’t have a gender requirement. If that isn’t strength, nothing is.
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Twain later reached back out to The Sunday Times to clarify, writing, “It’s a tricky word for me, as growing up for so many years the word had so much negativity and confusion around it that I didn’t personally proclaim myself as a feminist.”
She added, “Even though when I look at the values and morals of what a feminist is, of course I align with them.”
This isn’t the first time she’s drawn this line, either. Back in her 2022 Netflix documentary “Shania Twain: Not Just a Girl,” she told Yahoo Entertainment, “I’m not a self-proclaimed feminist, I’m just myself.” She’s been saying the same thing for years. The world just keeps asking the question differently.
Shania Twain didn’t become the top-selling female country-pop artist of all time by fitting neatly into anyone’s box. She’s sold over 100 million albums worldwide, won five Grammys, and became the first artist in history to release three consecutive Diamond-certified albums. Taylor Swift has credited Twain for inspiring her country crossover, and Carrie Underwood has said she “paved the way” for a lot of women in country, whether they realize it or not.
She did all of that without ever needing a label to explain what she was doing. She was too busy doing it.
And right now, at 60, she’s still going. She’s currently supporting Harry Styles for a 12-night residency at Wembley Stadium in London, her seventh studio album “Little Miss Twain” drops July 24, and a Sony Pictures biopic titled “Shania” is in development with director Leah McKendrick writing and directing.
Call her a feminist, call her an independent thinker, call her whatever you want. Shania Twain has never needed anyone’s permission to be exactly who she is, and at 60, she’s still not asking for it.
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