On Thursday of last week, 39 local leaders, celebrities, and influencers came together to model looks from six Burlington clothing shops at No Excuse Boxing to raise funds for Halton Women’s Place.
The fashion show fundraiser, called There’s No Excuse for Woman Abuse, also featured Second Skin, a punching-bag artwork by artist Tania LaCaria and eight other women who have survived abuse. It was displayed in the boxing ring, hanging behind event organizer and emcee Julie Cole as kept the energy high throughout the night. The event also included a clothing drive by Vickie Cooper Realty Group, who collected women’s workwear for women who need return-to-work attire (many women escaping abuse must leave most of their clothing and possessions behind), and a cheque presentation by Gore Mutual to Halton Women’s Place.
Last year’s event raised $17,500 and Peter John VanDyk, another of the event’s organizers, noted last week that this year’s fashion show was on pace to increase that total. The 2023 version was another sell-out, with outfits by Joelle’s and Jeff’s Guyshop, the White Coconut, Bocana Boutique, Woven, and Scriveners Men’s Apparel, and snacks and drinks by the Cookie DOH Factory, Comeback Snacks, Vineland Estates Winery, Nickel Brook Brewing Co., and Chaiiwala of London.
The approving crowd greeted each model with cheers as they sashayed the runway. The beautiful models included Layne, the Auctionista; Emily O’Brien of Comeback Snacks, musician/actor/model Bill Bell; Brittany Speers (“The other Britney Spears,” noted emcee Cole); musician Suzie McNeil; Tammy Fox, executive director of the Burlington Performing Arts Centre; Chris Farias of Unicorn Rebellion branding agency (and whose dog made a cameo appearance); boxer, trainer, and coach Ken Paguaga; Lohifa Pogoson Acker, hair artist and owner of hair studio LoDidThat; and Ward 2 Councillor Lisa Kearns and her two children. Mayor Marianne Meed Ward closed the show.
After the models strutted their stuff on the runway, LaCaria came to the podium to explain the art piece; some of the women who created Second Skin with LaCaria were at the event, and stood as their names were called, to much applause.
Second Skin was created at No Excuse Boxing prior to the fashion show; the perfect space to produce such a powerful work because of the connections between resilience and mental and physical strength, qualities shared by the boxers who train at the gym and the women who came together to make Second Skin. All of the women involved identify themselves as survivors of abuse (which comes in many forms — emotional, physical, sexual, financial, cultural) and are at various stages in their healing journeys.
VanDyk had the idea to have a piece of art made out of a punching bag, and LaCaria took on the project as creative lead, taking her process of “channelling emotions and intentions very clearly” to create intuitive art into this project as well. LaCaria explains the piece’s title as an allusion to scar tissue: a trauma occurs, and the ensuing healing process is “messy, painful, and slow…but the second skin comes back stronger.”
To channel emotion and intention into this piece, LaCaria and the group of eight women sat around the punching bag, where LaCaria asked the women to write words or sentences about how they felt at the beginning of their journeys of healing on pieces of paper. LaCaria then read all of them out loud, including her own. “It was quite powerful to read all of these meaningful, emotional words,” she says. In that space, a kind of bearing witness happened, bearing witness to the pain of others by women who know that pain themselves — followed by a release of the pain. Each woman then scrunched up the papers and threw them beneath the punching bag.
Next, LaCaria asked each of the women to write about their current place in their journeys — and the mood changed. These words were read by the women who wrote them, and then it was “positive, enlightening, everyone was laughing and smiling, feeling empowered,” LaCaria notes. Then, all that positive energy was channelled into the punching bag before the women put their marks on it.
There was no push for anyone to tell their personal stories, though some of those came out; each woman was asked to make a first mark on the punching bag, with whatever colour or tool they wanted, and a last mark, though there were no rules for what happened in between.
What emerged was a powerful expression of survivorship, of healing, of thriving after trauma. LaCaria explains, “We need to know pain in order to know joy, we need to know pain in order to know healing.” It was important for the women to remember how the beginnings of their journeys felt in order to truly feel the impact of where they stand today. “Those words of empowerment would not have been as impactful if we hadn’t recognized the words of pain from before,” she says.
And then there’s the community aspect: sharing with others who recognize the emotions and the work that has to be done to move forward is also healing. It’s not about the comparison of suffering, it is about understanding “the journey we’ve all been on, regardless of what the pain point was,” LaCaria explains. Ultimately, it is about hope, about continuing to heal, about finding out what life looks like after trauma, and thriving, together.
And that is just what Second Skin and There’s No Excuse for Woman Abuse will help other women do, by supporting Halton Women’s Place, standing with the women who use their services, and illustrating just what survivors look like when they are thriving.
