Compromise. Shave one leg.
Is your mom the type of person that won’t walk outside to check the mail without full makeup and hair on point? This is bizarre to me. I mean, I get that your personal choice is not for her personally, but ffs she is going to ruin her relationship with you because you choose not to shave?!
You should ask her point blank (while being ready to walk right out the door) if this argument is worth ending your relationship with her. If you do walk out that door go no contact for a specified amount of time (Mom, I’m going to take a break from you for 1/3/6 months. In that time please do not attempt to contact me. We can try and have a productive conversation with regard to my personal hygiene at that time). You can keep in contact with your dad since he is… well, not necessarily supportive, but he is being more tolerant, I guess.
This is maddening to me; I am in your parent’s demographic and if one of my adult daughters said they were going to stop shaving their legs and armpits my response would be, “You do you, boo. Now come give daddy a hug.” Oh wait, one of my daughters has done this. He is now a trans man. I drove six hours to his city last summer to take him to the clinic to get his top surgery done and make sure he was set up with his meds and plenty of food for his recovery. Then I drove home. He was in the loving care of his boyfriend (also FtM) so I felt good about leaving my child in his hands.
I’m am judging the fuck out of your mom right now. Absolutely DO NOT shave to appease her. You know it would not stop there.
As a woman who doesn’t feel that she’s disgusting and repulsive for looking the way a female homo sapiens naturally looks, I’d dig in until the bitter end. I’d rather not go on a boat than give in to society’s brainwashing that women’s body hair is disgusting but a man’s is perfectly fine.
But it’s different for every person. You have to decide which is worth more to you, compromising your bodily autonomy or seeing your mother. Only you know which is the right choice in your individual case.
As for your dad, he can get back to you after he shaves his legs.
Whaddup, hairy lady here. I have PCOS and my hirsuitism (while relegated to mainly my arms & lower body) is very obvious with my translucent piglet skin tone.
I finally stopped shaving my arms and legs because it became a daily and CONSTANT whirlwind of anxiety and the pain of constantly shaving was really damaging my skin. When I finally worked up the courage to wear shorts again it sucked because all my worst anxieties about my body became true. People stopped me in the grocery store, a lot of ‘friends’ asked me super intrusive and rude questions- I am treated differently because of it. But now after four years of no more shaving, living WITHOUT the constant, crippling anxiety of having ‘done enough’ to my body to be able to interact with society is soooo much better for my mental and emotional health. I can just…leave my house now without the 2 hour battle and eventual crying jag because nothing is enough.
Please stay firm in what is good and healthy for YOU because YOU are the one that has to live with it, not your mother or father. You aren’t ruining your relationship with your mother, she sounds upset that you are taking control of your body in a way that society at large tends to frown upon. Maybe she’s scared of the way people will treat you because of it, but it doesn’t give her the right to make demands about your appearance. Good luck.
I think your compromise is perfectly reasonable. Your mother is misinterpreting “compromise” as “acquiescence”; one is meeting in the middle, the other is doing as you’re told. The thing about doing everything for you is that she’s a parent and she signed up for that. Your body hair has very little impact on her provided that you’re clean.
I would honestly be tempted just to stick to your compromise of wearing clothing so she can’t see it on the boat. Unless she’s extremely odd, she’s not likely to check.