Kylie MinogueKylie Minogue has said that having breast cancer has both changed her body and how she thinks about it.

She told Glamour magazine recently: “What I believed before my illness has only been enhanced since, and that’s that beauty comes from within. But I don’t see myself the way other people see me.”

“It is hard to express what I have learnt from that, but a deep physiological and emotional shift has happened.”

“When you are stripped of everything and you have to grow your eyelashes back, grow your hair back, it’s just astonishing.”

“I’ve shrunk to nothing, I’ve ballooned - my body is not what it used to be but it’s the body I’m in.”

She added that she thought being diagnosed with the disease in May 2005 may mean the end of her music career and other connected enterprises such as her perfume line with Coty: “I really thought I might be dropped. But they said, ‘We’re here and we’re not going anywhere’.”

Since she was given the all-clear early last year after surgery and intense radiotherapy, she said she was determined to get on with her life again: “I guess I’ve given myself challenges, like the swimwear campaign for H&M. That’s my way of dealing with it.”

She also began work on her new album X, which is released next month, as a sort of therapy: “I had just taken my [head]scarf off [after her hair started to grow back] and wanted to reassure myself I could still do what I did before.”

“So the first chance I got, I went into the studio for a week and went nuts.”

“I got out some emotions that haven’t ended up on this album but they were the stepping stones I needed to reach this point.”