Shania Twain said she would 'flatten' her boobs growing up to protect herself from sexual abuse in her childhood home

• Shania Twain said she grew up being emotional and sexually abused by her stepfather.
• The singer told The Sunday Times that she would "flatten" her boobs to protect herself from him.

Shania Twain said she protected herself from abuse at the hands of her stepfather growing up by hiding her boobs in a recent interview with The Sunday Times.

The singer, who shot to fame in the late 1990s with the release of her third album "Come on Over," opened up about the challenges she faced growing up in Ontario, Canada, in the same home as her mother, stepfather, and four siblings.

Twain, 57, told the newspaper her family was not well-off and that she started performing in bars at the age of eight.

Though she now appears comfortable embracing femininity today, Twain said it didn't come naturally to her as a performer following the sexual and physical abuse she experienced in her childhood.

As a prepubescent teenager, she said she would do everything she could not to show the development of her body. "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," Twain said. "Make it easier to go unnoticed. Because, oh my gosh, it was terrible — you didn't want to be a girl in my house."

It's not the first time Twain detailed the hardships she went through as a child. She first revealed she'd suffered physical and sexual abuse by her stepfather in her 2001 autobiography "From This Moment On," according to Country Living.

In the book, she recalled an instances where she would physically interrupt her parents' fights because she thought her stepfather would end up killing her mother.

However, speaking to The Sunday Times, Twain said it wasn't courage but anger that prompted her to intervene. "It took a long time to manage that anger. You don't want to be somebody that attacks me on the street," she said. "Because I will f***ing rip your head off if I get the chance."

Her parents died in a car crash when she was 22. But it would take a few more years after that until she said she found her confidence and self-love for her body, she told the publication.

"I could speak and tell a story about myself, by the way I moved my body, the drape of the fabrics, the colours, where the focus was," she said. "I was never an exhibitionist for the sake of, like, saying, you know, 'Look at my tits.' It was really me coming into myself. It was a metamorphosis of sorts."