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People Magzine article continued...
 Super Sis ended up selling her parents' home in Timmins and moving the clan into a rented house with no running water in Huntsville. There, Mary Baily, a friend of their mother's found Twain a job performing at Deerhurst Resort as a sequined cabaret singer with big hair. "She would bring these big jugs of drinking water from Deerhurst," says Carrie-Ann. "We would all junp in her [truck] and go down to the river to bathe. We hated it."
While roughing it at home, Twain was glowing onstage at Deerhurst. In 1991, Baily, who by then had becolme her manager, persuaded attourney Frank to fly to Toronto to check out Twain's act. Impressed, Frank coaxed Nashville producer Norro Wilson to work on her demo, and later that year, Twain left for Nashville. She also left behind her brothers, who had finished high school, and Carrie-Ann. Adopting the name Shania from a wardrobe girl at Deerhurst (her friends and family still call her Eilleen), Twain released her debut album, Shania Twain, in 1993. It sold only about 100,000 copies, but with Lange on board, 1995's The Woman In Me produced eight country hits, including "Any Man Of Mine" and "Whose Bed Have Your Boots Been Under?"
These days, Twain's own boots rarely stay under one bed for long. Off the road, she vacations with her husband in the Caribbean or at their retreat in southwest Florida. But they spend most of their time in Tour-de-Peliz, Switzerland, at their 19th-century manor house that they bought in December after putting their 3,000-acre estate in Upstate New York on the market for $7.5 million. "There was a zoning problem," says Twain of their relocation abroad, which some speculate had more to do with the lower taxes there. "My husband wanted to do a lot of landscaping. And that landscaping wasn't permitted."
Despite the chronic separations, Twain and Lange remain kindred spirits. Both are teetotaling vegetarians and horse lovers, and he reportedly has introduced her to the principles of Sant Mat, an Indian form of meditation. Most important, they agree to put work first, which means postponing a family. "I'd like to have kids, but we're not planning at this point," says Twain. "Right now I'm dedicated and committed to my career." Perhaps she'll never be ready for motherhood. "She says that one day she wants to have kids," says Carrie-Ann, who is herself a mother. "Then," she adds half jokingly, "she comes and visits and changes her mind."
Having children, after all, might tamper with Twain's trademark abs, which she flaunts at the drop of a ten-gallon hat. Much of Nashville doesn't have the stomach for such racy exhibitionism and has struck back. Despite her success, Twain has never won a Country Music Association award. "She hasn't won the awards she should have," says Nashville journalist Michael McCall. "It hasn't quite happened for her as it has for Garth or the Dixie Chicks." Country star Reba McEntire agrees: "She's been at the top of the charts for two years, and she still hasn't gotten the pats on the back she deserves."
 At this year's [1999] Grammy Awards, Twain shocked the town by squeezing into a skintight dominatrix ensemble to purr "Man! I Feel Like A Woman!" And yet, she says, "I've never been out to offend people or do things for the sake of being different. But you can't please everyone. As long as I'm comfortable and I like what I see in the mirror, I go for it." McEntire, for one thinks she should: "She's got the body, and she's got the looks."
In July, after her tour ends, Twain will join Lange in Sqitzerland, where they'll start work on an album of Christmas music. It probably won't contain any honky-tonk tearjerkers about hungry holidays past. "As much as she has in common with the Loretts Lynns of the world," says journalist McCall, "she doesn't sing the heartbreak songs. She doesn't want to look back at that time in her life. She wants to be positive and move forward." That means donating a portion of the proceeds from each of her concerts to charities that help feed hungry children. It's a nod to her impoverished pas, but mostly it's a celebration of now. "When I look back at my childhood, I don't carry that grief with me," she says. "I feel like it was another person. I've gone through some very dramatic stages in my life, and I feel three different people lived through those stages. It's funny," she adds, "I often feel like I'm on my third lifetime."
Written by: Jeremy Helligar
Contributions: Natasha Stoynoff, Jennifer Longley, Beverly Keel, Julie Jordan, Helena Bachmann and Josie Ballenger.
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