Shania Twain Used to Blowdry Her Hair With a Vacuum Cleaner, Which Made It Smell ‘Like Old Dog Poop’
Shania Twain may be a world-famous superstar today, but the country singer came from humble beginnings in rural Canada. As a child, Twain and her family had to make do with what they had, and learned to improvise many things, including how to dry their hair.
Shania Twain grew up poor
Twain reflected on her less-than-glamorous upbringing in her 2011 memoir From This Moment On. Her family didn’t have much money, which led to them preparing meals like a simple goulash or sandwiches with nothing more than mustard on them.
“In our house, when the cupboards were otherwise empty, we ate what we called goulash, which in reality consisted of boiled milk poured over broken pieces of dry white bread and topped with brown sugar,” Twain recalled. “Very hard to feel satisfied no matter how much goulash you fill up your belly with when you have a neighbor who is sitting down to his juicy, barbecued steak for Saturday lunch and his roast beef dinner that evening.”
She went on to describe what she called a “poor man’s sandwich,” which her father called the meals that Twain often went to school with: “mustard or mayonnaise spread on two slices of white bread.”
She blowdried her hair with her vacuum cleaner
Twain later reflected on the joys of frigid Canadian winters and how she and her sisters had to find different ways to dry their hair before stepping outside.
“[A] winter hazard was going outdoors with wet hair on a frigid day; I once heard of someone’s frozen ponytail snapping right off,” Twain said. “Unfortunately, around our house, a hair dryer fell into the ‘luxury item’ category, and so my sisters and I had to improvise.”
“We figured out that if we took the vacuum cleaner and attached the hose to the end where the warm air blew out, we’d be able to dry our hair,” she continued. “The only hitch was that the jet of air stank from dog hair, dried bits from indoor accidents, stale food crumbs, and whatever else got sucked up the Electrolux that week. Consequently, our hair smelled accordingly — mostly like old dog poop, though.”
“One alternative was to hang our heads over the heating vents in the floor, but this took much longer,” she added. “On most mornings, when we were running late for the school bus, the smeller but speedier Electrolux was the better choice.”
She sang in bars as a child to help her family
From a young age, music became Twain’s escape from her tumultuous life at home. Her love for singing was apparent since she was a child, and her mother figured it could help the family.
When she was just a child, Twain’s mother began taking her to bars to perform for rooms full of adults as a way to make money for the family. Her father was oblivious to her and her mother’s side business, though he would often hear them come home late at night, leading to ensuing drama.
