Few songs can transform a room as quickly as “Man! I Feel Like a Woman!”

The opening guitar riff is barely finished before people know exactly what is coming.

Then Shania Twain delivers that unmistakable opening declaration, and the song becomes a celebration of dressing up, going out, ignoring expectations and having fun.

For more than two decades, it has been treated as one of pop-country’s ultimate girl-power anthems.

But the inspiration behind it may go back much further than Twain’s years as a Nashville superstar.

Long before the hit records, arena tours and glamorous music videos, Twain was a young woman in Toronto discovering a world completely different from the small Canadian community where she had grown up.

She went out with friends to gay clubs.

There, she became fascinated by the fashion, makeup, dancing and particularly the way some of the men could transform their appearance with extraordinary confidence and creativity.

Years later, Twain looked back on those nights and realized they may have planted the earliest seed for one of the most famous songs she would ever write.

Before Shania Twain, There Was a Young Woman Trying to Find Her Place

Twain’s rise to superstardom can make it easy to forget how long she spent far away from the glamorous world people eventually associated with her.

She grew up in Timmins, Ontario, and had been performing from a very young age.

Music was already central to her life, but becoming an international star was still only an ambition.

As a young woman, she moved to Toronto to pursue music more seriously.

The city exposed her to people, music and styles she had not experienced growing up.

She shared an apartment with friends and began meeting new people through them.

Friday nights sometimes meant heading out together.

And some of those nights took Twain into Toronto’s gay nightlife.

For her, it was a completely new environment.

She was fascinated.

The Makeup Was Part of What Stayed With Her

Twain later remembered the preparation before going out almost as clearly as the clubs themselves.

Friends would gather.

People would dress up.

Makeup became part of the ritual.

This was during an era when Madonna’s influence on fashion was enormous, and young people experimented with dramatic hair, eyeliner and clothing.

Twain watched men use cosmetics with a level of skill and imagination that impressed her.

Their faces could change through blush, eye makeup, liners and accessories.

The transformation was not subtle.

It was glamorous.

It was theatrical.

And most importantly, it looked fun.

For someone who would later build one of country music’s most carefully controlled visual identities, those experiences offered an early lesson in how clothing and makeup could become part of performance.

Twain was not merely watching people get dressed.

She was watching people play with identity.

There Was Freedom in the Room

What Twain seems to have remembered most was not simply what everyone looked like.

It was the freedom surrounding it.

People could experiment.

They could dress dramatically.

They could exaggerate femininity or masculinity.

They could step outside what other people expected them to look like.

And they could do it without treating the evening as a serious statement.

Sometimes it was simply about having a good time.

That spirit would eventually sit at the heart of “Man! I Feel Like a Woman!”

The song is not a complicated argument about gender.

It is a celebration.

The woman singing it wants to go out.

She wants to wear what she wants.

She wants to forget restrictions.

She wants to have fun on her own terms.

Years after those Toronto nights, Twain recognized the connection.

Her early fascination with men transforming themselves through makeup and fashion, she said, likely planted a seed that eventually emerged in the song.

The Song Came Years Later

By the time Twain actually wrote “Man! I Feel Like a Woman!,” her life had changed enormously.

She was no longer simply a young Canadian singer trying to find opportunities.

She had become one of country music’s biggest stars.

Together with producer and then-husband Robert John “Mutt” Lange, Twain was creating music that deliberately blurred the line between country and pop.

That approach reached its peak with Come On Over.

Released in 1997, the album became a commercial phenomenon.

It contained songs that would define Twain’s career, including “You’re Still the One,” “That Don’t Impress Me Much” and “Man! I Feel Like a Woman!”

The last of those seemed perfectly designed for the Shania Twain the public now recognized.

Bold.

Playful.

Stylish.

Completely confident.

But some of its emotional DNA came from a period long before that superstar image existed.

The Music Video Took the Idea Even Further

The video for “Man! I Feel Like a Woman!” made the song’s play with gender impossible to miss.

Twain appeared in a black top hat, white shirt, black tie and short black dress — deliberately borrowing visual ideas traditionally associated with menswear while exaggerating femininity at the same time.

Behind her stood a group of male models.

They were carefully styled.

They posed rather than dominated the action.

The entire setup famously reversed some of the gender dynamics viewers had seen in earlier music videos featuring male rock stars surrounded by glamorous women.

Twain controlled the frame.

She controlled the joke.

She controlled the clothes.

That visual confidence matched the attitude she had admired years earlier in Toronto.

Fashion could be transformed.

Gender presentation could be played with.

And none of it needed to stop anyone from simply enjoying themselves.

The Song Became Much Bigger Than One Audience

One of the most interesting things about “Man! I Feel Like a Woman!” is who sings it now.

Women obviously embraced it.

But they are hardly alone.

Men sing it.

Country audiences sing it.

Pop audiences sing it.

Drag performers embraced it.

Wedding crowds scream it.

People who may have almost nothing else in common can suddenly join the same chorus when that opening riff begins.

Twain herself has spoken about seeing men enthusiastically sing along with the song.

That universal reaction fits surprisingly well with the environment that helped inspire it.

The Toronto clubs Twain remembered were places where people could temporarily stop worrying about exactly how they were supposed to behave.

“Man! I Feel Like a Woman!” eventually offered millions of listeners a similar invitation.

For a few minutes, rules could wait.

It Also Revealed Something About Shania’s Superstar Image

Twain’s visual presentation would become unusually important to her success.

Country music had certainly produced glamorous women before her.

But Twain pushed that glamour into a distinctly modern pop world.

Leopard print.

Top hats.

Midriff-baring outfits.

Bold makeup.

Fashion became part of the entertainment.

Yet the Toronto story suggests that her fascination with transformation did not suddenly appear after she became famous.

She had been watching what clothes, hair and makeup could do years earlier.

She had seen ordinary people turn getting ready for a night out into a performance of its own.

Later, when she finally had massive stages and music-video budgets available to her, that instinct could become much larger.

An Anthem With an Unexpected Beginning

That is what makes the origin story so satisfying.

Listeners might assume “Man! I Feel Like a Woman!” was created simply because Twain and Lange wanted a catchy empowerment anthem for a huge country-pop album.

The reality appears more personal.

Somewhere underneath the finished record were memories from Twain’s youth.

Friends getting ready together.

Dark eyeliner.

Big hair.

Gay clubs.

Great dancers.

And men who amazed her with the way makeup and fashion could transform them into glamorous versions of themselves.

Twain did not immediately go home and write “Man! I Feel Like a Woman!”

The idea stayed somewhere in her memory.

Years passed.

Her career changed.

Her life changed.

Then eventually, one of the most recognizable songs of the 1990s emerged.

Millions of women would eventually sing it as an anthem of confidence and freedom.

But one of its earliest sparks may have come from Shania Twain standing in Toronto as a young woman, watching men dress up for a night out and realizing just how much fun transformation could be.