Shania Twain Tapped into Marketable ’90s Feminism with The Woman in Me

By 1995, the Riot Grrrl movement was winding down: Heavens to Betsy and Bratmobile had broken up the year before, and Bikini Kill would release their final album in 1996. At the same time, women’s empowerment and rage—both amplified by the underground movement—had been co-opted by the mainstream, as noted by Sara Marcus in her vital history Girls to the Front: The True Story of the Riot Grrrl Revolution. While in the 2010s we had Ruth Bader Ginsburg mugs and girl boss-branded notebooks to herald the watering down of feminism, back in the ‘90s it was the arrival of the Spice Girls and the designation “angry women in pop” that buried truly revolutionary gender politics. 

People were primed for an artist like Twain, who rejoiced in her femininity but wasn’t afraid to ask for what she wanted. She was and is conventionally attractive, a perfectly marketable vehicle for songs like “Any Man of Mine,” in which she confidently enumerates the qualities she requires in a partner (from standard stuff like “Even when I’m ugly, he still better love me” and the hilarious insistence that he enjoy her meals, even if she’s “[burned] it black”). This alluring juxtaposition is a quality that seems to be inherent to Twain as a person, and something she actively tapped into; she explained in that 2020 video, “As a songwriter, I always thought it was very important to show that contrast between representing the independent, strong female and not abandoning my own personal femininity.” Despite the clear pop appeal and hip-swinging fun of “Any Man of Mine,” label heads worried it would intimidate listeners, and urged her to release it as her second instead of lead single—they must have been surprised when it became her first number one hit on country radio.  

Besides arriving at the perfect pop culture moment, Twain also draws enough from the country music tradition to actively root The Woman in Me within the genre’s history. Cheating songs are a staple of country, especially of the scorned woman variety—think Loretta Lynn’s “Fist City” and “You Ain’t Woman Enough (To Take My Man),” or Dolly Parton’s beloved “Jolene.” Twain’s take on the cheating song, “Whose Bed Have Your Boots Been Under?,” is hilarious, unserious and, as a result, one hell of a party (side note: Andy Dodd and Adam Watts had to have been listening to this when they wrote the upbeat version of “What I’ve Been Looking For” that appears in High School Musical). There’s none of the venom of “Fist City” or the melancholic pleading of “Jolene”—just jokes about a guy who can’t keep it in his pants. She seems to be above all the drama; he hasn’t earned her tears, only her light-hearted scorn. “Raining on Our Love,” on the other hand, is a more reflective take on the cheating song. “I didn’t know you were so lonely / Am I to blame for making you that way?” she wonders, before lamenting that “now she gives the love I did not show.” With Shania, you get both approaches: the hard and the soft, the tough and the tender. 

There are plenty more tear-jerking moments The Woman in Me. The opening song laments a relationship in which the man isn’t cheating, but “Home Ain’t Where His Heart Is (Anymore).” While the production is dated and the song verges on treacly at times, there’s a sad, piercing truth to lyrics like, “But he don’t feel the same / Since our lives became / Years of bills, babies and chains.” The album’s title track best showcases the Now & Later-esque appeal of Twain as an artist. “I’m not always strong / And sometimes I’m even wrong,” she confesses. She admits that she needs her partner in some of the most hetero lyrics of all time, but the underlying message endures: It’s difficult to reconcile the desire to be a force of nature with the very human need for softness. 

The Woman in Me is a romp of an album that will make even the shiest wallflower start to line dance, but its message of empowerment is, ultimately, a superficial one. I have no doubt that many a woman has felt more confident and willing to ask for what she wants after hearing “Any Man of Mine,” but individual emotions are not the same as a larger social tide turning. In some ways, she reminds me of the Barbie movie; both are not groundbreaking in their approach to womanhood, but introduce the seed of feminism to a large number of people. Marcus puts it best: “Top-Forty artists aren’t cultural movements; they’re ultra-homogenized and uber-marketed holographic projects, aspects of culture that get blown up to Jumbotron size and burrow a pic line to the id.” Twain was and is such an artist.

At the same time, radical politics are not the function of pop stars—at least they weren’t back then. But as the horrors in our world grow more flagrant, we need A-list artists to step up to the plate. Thankfully, some have, like Chappell Roan speaking out at the Grammys about artists needing a living wage, and that same night Lady Gaga spoke out in support of trans people. Simple escapism or navel-gazing catharsis just doesn’t cut it anymore when it comes to pop. There will always be a place in our hearts for albums like The Woman in Me, which switches from winking fun to heartsick ballads in an instant, but its diluted version of feminism is a stark reminder of its age.

Clare Martin is a cemetery enthusiast and Paste’s associate music editor.