Her business is beauty and she doesn’t fear anti-mask beast

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 11/03/2022 (1021 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Megan Franklin is joking — sort of — about taking bets on how many hate messages she’ll get after the province lifts its indoor mask mandate Tuesday.

Franklin isn’t doing away with face coverings at Frank + Olive, the wellness studio she owns in Winkler. It might be the only business in town making that choice, as she believes was the case last August when the mandate was lifted briefly by health officials.

She got pushback then, and she expects to get some again next week in Winkler, which ranks as the health district with the second-lowest vaccine uptake in the province; only the surrounding RM of Stanley ranks lower. In both, less than half of the eligible population has received at least one dose of a COVID-19 vaccine.

“There was definitely a few people who left a couple reviews or left me a voicemail or two, and just expressed how the divisiveness that I was causing in their community was not something that they would ever support,” Franklin, 27, told the Free Press Friday.

“But at the end of the day, I’ve come to realize that most of these people with negative things to say about my business have never actually stepped foot inside of it, so it’s no love lost.”

Some businesses in the province opting to continue asking for proof of vaccination have been subjected to fake negative online reviews, harassing phone calls and calls for boycotts.

But come what may, Franklin said maintaining a safe, comfortable space for women in the area — there aren’t many other places like hers — is the priority.

“The common narrative that I have received from our community is how valued and just important we really are,” she said. “Winkler being the religious community that it has been for so long, I would say that female empowerment has been kind of put on the back burner, or not even really brought to light.”

Franklin said she discussed her position with the two women who rent space at Frank + Olive to provide esthetic services, and they agreed to follow the rules, irrespective of their personal opinions.

“I’ve kind of taken a stance that this is what it will be, and if you can’t handle that, then you have a personal decision to make,” she said. “But I will have to run this business the way that I see fit because it affects all of us, regardless of viewpoints and stances.”

Given the divisiveness over vaccines, masks and public-health orders in the community during the pandemic, Mayor Martin Harder said he won’t be surprised if Franklin and any other similarly inclined area business owners are subjected to backlash in one form or another.

“The anger will not disappear just because a date has come and gone,” he said. “It will remain.

“If I was a business who was dependent on reviews, with the environment of some people’s minds these days… I would remove those reviews as fast as I could, because it’s not fair.”

For many in the community, the mask mandate was over long ago or, in some cases, never existed. Retail and restaurant employees were often met with angry opposition from customers after they were asked to put a mask on.

Harder said there has been some unpleasantness in municipal buildings.

“We’re no longer checking the (proof of) vaccine, but still enforcing masks, and I can tell you, even that has become more difficult after the vaccine mandates were removed,” he said.

Winkler Chamber of Commerce president Keith Gislason said while most businesses are looking forward to the end of the mandate, he knows of others who could join Franklin in choosing safety over other considerations.

“I suspect that it might come down to the last day for several of them before they decide,” Gislason said. “It’s a hard balance for some of them where they want to keep serving people, but they’ve also got to keep people safe.”

He said he’s seen “vocal and, frankly, militant” pushback from both sides of the argument and hopes that people will act with civility next week.

“In some ways, there’s very little we can do, we try and support all of our businesses and as long as they’re complying with their requirements legally and such,” he said. “We try and be supportive to them.”

The last two years have been difficult for Frank + Olive, which Franklin launched in May 2020; restrictions have meant it has been closed more than it has been open since then.

But things are looking up — business is steady now. Franklin recently tweeted about her decision to continue with masks and received hundreds of replies, the vast majority of them positive.

She said she hopes people who might be quick to paint everyone in Winkler with the same brush take a step back and realize the community isn’t a monolith and offer support to businesses whose ideas align with their own.

“I just remember that there are good people everywhere you go, and those who are screaming and those who are loud aren’t necessarily always the ones that are right, or have people’s best interests in mind,” she said.

malak.abas@freepress.mb.ca