HORN LAKE, Miss. — Many people working in the personal care industry are still waiting to get back to work. Hair stylists and barbers are hurting because they’ve lost their livelihood.
One Mississippi family said they’ve obeyed the rules for weeks by not working, but now it’s about survival.
“We did our 40 days like we were asked to, and we did it with patience, and now we’re on day 4, and after yesterday’s announcement, we are not phase one, not phase two, and we can only pray for phase three when the governor decides to let us open,” Natasha Watts said.
Jeff ‘Flea’ Watts and his wife Natasha are on a social media crusade to get back to work.
They posted a Facebook message to Gov. Tate Reeves about their financial hardship from Mississippi’s safer-at-home order that shut down Pure Thirteen, the tattoo business in Horn Lake where Watts works.
“We’re not looked at as essential because it’s tattoos,” Jeff Watts said. “They don’t think that what we do is important, even though what I do provides for my family.”
Watts, who’s worked 13 years in the business, has a following and regular clientele.
“I have kept him home,” Natasha Watts said. “I did not let him tattoo illegally. I didn’t let him make house calls. I didn’t let him do one-on-one behind the doors.”
But now they don’t see an end in sight.
“We were hoping and praying and fingers were crossed, May 11, May 11, May 11, and now no, sorry, you don’t get to work,” Natasha said.
The Wattses said they didn’t qualify for any stimulus money or loans, and their savings is running out, but the bills are still due. All they want to do is go to work.
“Its like to the point, do we violate this order and try to support our family to feed them, or do we just sit here and starve and become homeless, and we’re not going to do that,” Jeff Watts said.
Another reason Watts said he should be allowed to work is that his industry is heavily regulated by the health department, and masks and gloves were the norm in the tattoo business long before the coronavirus became a threat.
