Shania Twain has Barbie modelled after her: ’My own projection of myself’

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As a young girl, Shania Twain says she used to make her own dolls, modelled after Barbie.

Her family couldn’t afford to buy her the real deal, Twain says, so she took matters into her own hands.

“My Barbie play was always at my cousin’s or at friend’s houses, but at home I would make my own Barbies,” she says. “I would play Barbie with my own creations.”

Now, the tables have turned — Mattel has made a Barbie doll modelled after Twain.

The country superstar, who is gearing up for a Las Vegas residency that begins in May, is one of eight women to receive a one-of-a-kind Barbie doll in their likeness for International Women’s Day, and Twain feels like it’s a bit of a full-circle moment.

The dolls she made were an outlet for her creativity: characters she invented made manifest. In a way, she says, the Barbie is the same thing.

“This Barbie is sort of a projection — my own projection of myself,” she says. “This character on stage, it’s all play. The costuming, the hair, everything, it’s all part of the same play that starts when you’re a child.”

The doll blends the old with the new. The doll’s hair is the pastel pink Twain has favoured lately, but she wears the outfit from the 1999 music video for “Man! I Feel Like a Woman!”: a top hat, a button-up shirt and tie, a black mini skirt and thigh-high boots, paired with a floor-length suit jacket that flares out at the waist like a ball gown.

It’s been a big year for Barbie. There was the blockbuster film, directed by Greta Gerwig, which is up for six Academy Awards — including best picture and a best supporting actor nod to Canadian Ryan Gosling, who will also perform the Oscar-nominated song “I’m Just Ken” at the ceremony on Sunday.

But it’s also Barbie’s birthday. The doll is turning 65; the anniversary of her creation is March 9.

Other women receiving their own Barbie this year include actresses Viola Davis and Helen Mirren, and singer Kylie Minogue.