‘A holistic view’: Local boutique owner heals through massage, fashion

Virginia “Gini” Maddocks is a licensed medical massage therapist, traveller, the author of a book, owner of a boutique in Oxford and someone with a “holistic view.”

“I believe that we are mental and physical and that one affects the other,” Maddocks said.

As a young child, Maddocks had polio, and although she doesn’t fully remember that time in her life, she remembers a terrible epidemic. Her clothes and toys were burned, as it was believed to help quell the spread of disease. 

She was paralyzed from the neck down and temporarily placed in an iron lung. Through the years, she’s needed surgeries and worn braces as the effects of the illness lingered.

 Now, she says her experience with polio affected everything she’s done in her life.

“I can’t dance like other people, but I can dance the way I dance because there is a more free flow in the era I grew up in,” she said. “I learned a lot about myself and how to use what you have as far as limitations and how to, maybe not overcome them, but to develop along with them and figure it out.”

Maddocks said she looks at life like everyone’s a puzzle, and their pieces can be fitted together in different ways.

“Polio taught me that,” she said.

Living holistically

Maddocks attended college at Miami University and trained to be a social worker. She graduated in the same quarter as her mother, who was taking night classes, in 1974.

After leaving Oxford and moving often – to Florida, Mississippi, Maine and Hawaii – she realized she no longer wanted a job in social work and decided to transition to a more holistic practice.

First, she worked at a health food store in Maine where she met people in the health industry and eventually took the path of holistic medicine.

She’s “dabbled” in different lifestyles, as a vegetarian and eventually a pescetarian, and earned her license in medical massage therapy. 

She wrote a book about holistic self care explaining the nervous system, posture and “our  tendencies towards habit and how to use that,” Maddocks said. “You have to disconnect from your tense situation and your tense position, and you can do it right there at your desk.”

The rest of the book includes less-than-a-minute techniques readers can try at their desks with side tips about holistic principles. 

At the time, she couldn’t afford a model or a photographer, so her partner followed her around, taking photos of her doing the poses herself – mainly in Hawaii.

The book, titled “R&R: Rescue and Relief for Computer Users and Those at Risk of Repetitive Motion Injury (RMI),” won an award and nearly made it on “The Oprah Winfrey Show,” according to Maddocks.

‘Passion for fashion’

Maddocks’ mother liked shopping at Goodwill thrift stores when she was young, and at the time, Maddocks couldn’t understand why.

“Back when I was a kid, I thought that was ridiculous. So I’d hide in the car while she was in there, finding wonderful treasures,” she said. 

Eventually, she learned how fun it could be to sift through clothing, put outfits together and be creative. As it developed into a hobby for her, she said it seemed to become more of a trend as people learned of the impact discarded clothing can have on the environment.

Maddocks moved back to Oxford in the 1990s and opened a massage therapy business. Between 2013 and 2020, she also operated a pop-up thrift store in her apartment in the same building as her business. 

“My daughter asked me once, she said, ‘Mom,’ – she was looking at my closet – she said, ‘Do you think you’re a hoarder?’

“So I thought about it for a while, and I thought, ‘No, because I could sell this stuff,’” Maddocks said, remembering their conversation.

So for those seven years, once a month, she had a party in her apartment wherein she’d hang clothes and jewelry on the walls and pose mannequins. She hosted potluck dinners, and local women would come over and stay all day. She called it “Snazzy Threads.”

But when Maddocks became tired of cleaning her apartment after every party, she decided to open her shop in 2020, now called the “Snazzy Boutique,” located at 211 S. Elm St.

“It’s a strength to have a resale shop, and it’s a joy because it’s so interesting,” she said. “It’s so much more interesting than going to a mall and seeing the same old, same old.”

Sometimes, she’ll come across garments that have been refashioned by their previous owners, upcycled and resold.

“Now I love that, I love pouring the creativity through this shop,” she said, adding her boutique has also become a way to further connect with her massage clientele. 

“Some days I wake up and I don’t know if I’m a retailer or I’m a massage therapist that day, and sometimes I’m both,” she said. “It allows me to have a more intimate experience with both of my clientele. I know how they shop. I know how they dress. Sometimes I help them. I know where their aches and pains are.”

Maddocks said her shop ties in with her pursuit of holistic medicine, in that she believes people can dress the way they want to feel.

“If you decide how you want to feel, you can do things that will cause your body to emit the hormones to support that system,” she said, adding although people live in a constant state of stress, they can change that by “switching” their nervous system. 

“That’s why meditation works, and that’s why deep breathing works,” she said. “I use clothes that way. In the morning, when I wake up, I don't dress how I might feel if I don’t feel good, like … (when) I’m starting to get depressed, and I reach for my black comfort clothes – that doesn’t aid my attitude. So I pick something else that makes me feel better when I look at it.” 

Maddocks said she didn’t get to begin travelling for fun until age 60, although her sixth decade was a “powerful one.” Now she’s been to 20 counties, and wherever she goes, she researches thrift shops. She’ll take an empty suitcase to bring items back and sell them in her shop.

During the COVID pandemic, she started selling her friends’ artwork in the lobby of the Snazzy Boutique, which she still does. And locals will donate items that may be sentimental to them, asking Maddocks to find it a new home. Maddocks also rents out vintage clothes and hats she finds.

“I think the shop is almost as personal as getting a full body massage,” she said. “And it’s a way to get conversation started.

But she really felt like she was helping people with her store when the Snazzy Boutique participated in a fashion show in September, through which all proceeds were donated to the Talawanda Oxford Pantry and Social Services (TOPSS).

“We filled that little bar,” she said, referring to the Twenty One on West College Corner. 

‘A stronger person’

Since returning to Oxford for family, Maddocks said she has found a “foundation” of “cool people” and more true friends than anywhere she’s lived.

“It’s very rewarding,” she said. “It really does enrich everything. It makes everything around you easier to bear and challenges easier to go through when you’ve got a good friend.”

Right now, Maddocks is a member of Jubilee, a group for women over 50 that meets once a month for a potluck, as well as the League of Women Voters. She is in a dream group wherein members attempt to interpret their dreams.

“What I have found over the years is that there are patterns to our dreams that usually relate to our personalities,” she said, adding some dreams may also be small precognitions, but mainly the group reads dreams and provides members insights to themselves.

She said, being in this group for a while, she’s also been able to see the stages of peoples’ lives and how their dreams might evolve into fears about major life changes.

Maddocks said her favorite age was in her 60’s when she felt the most powerful, and overall, she felt like a stronger person, physically and emotionally after turning 60.

Although she said there are many stories she could tell, or fill a book with all the places she’s fallen and someone has helped her up, “I would have to say that as I look back on things, what I am most grateful for are the human interactions.”

She said she also feels, as someone who has been through eras which were harsh politically and socially, she may be able to help those around her as the world looks “scarier.”

“As I get older, and as I see the world turns, I am trying to remain a steadying factor,” she said. “And part of that is to help uplift. And my clothes do that. My shop does that. And offering a place for art does that. And working with people, bodies in their own issues, does that. 

“And so (my shop) is a really wonderful way to feed myself and try to do my bit here on South Elm Street.”