What Shania Twain Played With Instead of Barbie Dolls As a Kid

Country music star Shania Twain came from humble beginnings in rural Canada. The Grammy-winning singer grew up without much, and often had to make do with what she had as her family struggled to put food on the table and a roof over their heads. As a result, Twain had to improvise when it came to playing with Barbie dolls.

Shania Twain played with grass as a child

Shania Twain reflected on her tumultuous upbringing in her 2011 memoir From This Moment On. Her family moved around often — at least once a year — and they were seemingly always settling in to a new house. One of her favorite homes was on Proulx Court in the rural town of Hanmer, Ontario.

“We had our own backyard for the first time, and I spent many hours there playing with grass,” Twain said. “Not just picking it; I loved to take tall-stemmed grass with long, wide blades draping down in a swoop that I’d split with my fingernail to create the effect of hairlike strands. Each grass had its own name and character, like a Barbie doll. Then I’d put on little plays, giving each of them different accents and personalities, like the mean one, the mother, and so on.”

“I loved acting out roles through them and found making up stories to be a great escape that whisked me to another place,” she continued. “I was very private about this make-believe play, as I felt embarrassed to share it with anyone else my own age. Although my little sister, Carrie, understood, and she joined in sometimes, I remember telling her quite seriously to never tell anyone that I played with grass.”

Shania Twain’s grass dolls made her consider being an actor

Playing with grass helped Twain get away from everything she was experiencing at home, including witnessing abuse.

“The stories were always complete fantasy and never about reality or drawn from my own life. This was an escape,” she said. “I enjoyed pretending that my grass people were from far away, like England or somewhere exotic like Egypt, for example.” (Interestingly enough, Twain actually traveled to the Great Pyramids in Egypt to film her 1995 music video “The Woman in Me (Needs the Man in You)”).

“I’ve often thought that maybe I should’ve become an actress, since I enjoyed being in someone else’s skin so much, but I think it’s more that I enjoyed being out of my own skin,” she admitted. “I can’t say that I would have been any good at real acting, but it sure would have suited my need to be somewhere else for a while, molding the characters and stories as I desired.”

Music was Shania Twain’s savior

For Twain, writing music had the same effect of escaping the real world as playing with grass or acting. She began songwriting the same year she started playing with grass.

“I was 10 when I wrote my first songs, and the backyard was a great place to hide and write,” she said honestly. “When I escaped into my creative world of ‘putting’ stories to music, like when I played with my grass dolls, I lost myself in a world of fiction.”