Shania Twain on posing nude at 58 and why 'menopause was a very good thing for me'

Shania Twain is embracing her new body and the changes that going through menopause has brought her.

The "Man! I Feel Like a Woman" singer, 58, came back with a bang when she released her new album Queen of Me earlier this year – her first album since 2017's Now – and was not afraid to show some skin for the cover art.

The confidence to pose nude came to her thanks to her newfound appreciation for her body, which she said she spent years hating.

Speaking with the New York Post, she explained: "Well, I'm the opposite from being an exhibitionist," before admitting: "But I like to feel sexy."

She continued: "I like to enjoy my body more now than ever," adding: "I used to hate my body. So when my body was young and, I guess, maybe one wouldn't be afraid of exhibiting it, I was hiding it a lot."

However, now that she has reevaluated her relationship with her body, she said: "I think I needed to capture where I am right now, because it's a moment that I want to remember.

"I just had to be brave about it, to own it," she maintained, adding: "And I felt really good that I felt like, 'Yeah, I'm OK with that.' I need to be able to look at myself in the mirror every day. I'm perfectly the way I should be. This is the way I should be at my age. I'm fine with it. And I'm not afraid of it anymore. It's all good."

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Shania has menopause to thank for her new perspective, and said: "I think menopause was a very good thing for me because there were a lot more things changing in everything about me physically that I had to very quickly come to terms with."

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She explained: "Menopause taught me to quickly say, 'You know, it may only get worse. So just love yourself now. Just get over your insecurities – they're standing in your way. And fear is standing in your way.'"

Further, she noted: "I want to live the way I write," explaining: "I always sing about being fearless and all of that. I go there when I write. But I'm not living it the way I'm writing it."

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Inspired by her own work, she says now: "I'm more fierce than I ever was because I really demanded it about myself."

The Queen of Me album and title track reflects that new determination, she says. "I'm the boss of me... I make my own decisions, I am confident in those decisions, and I take responsibility for those actions. And that makes me more comfortable in my own skin, makes me… a lot harder to throw off balance.

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"What the songwriting process did for me was allow me to escape into another frame of mind," she added. 

For example, of her single "Giddy Up," she said: "I wanted to put some 'up' in my 'giddy.' So I wrote myself out of this COVID funk. I was able to project myself into this happy place. All of the songs were born from that escapism."

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