Well if this isn’t a never-ending battle:

Parents vs their teens tattoos choices.

Then you add the wrinkle of living with your parents, who are basically letting you live w/o paying any $$ towards housing.

That’s a tough circumstance.

And it’s exactly the setting for this story about a young girl trying to navigate it all.

AITA for refusing to cover my tattoo

I (19F) recently got a tattoo on the back of my upper arm, around 6ish cm in length.

For context I live with my parents and go to uni full time. I also work around 25hrs every week.

I don’t pay rent but do use my own money for essentially everything else.

So, she gets one, knowing everything she knew…

Kind of a bold move?

Basically I knew my parents didn’t like tattoos but I really wanted one and thought they’d be a little upset but get over it after a few days.

My dad did just that, told me he hates it then moved on straight away.

My mum on the other hand reacted horribly. She did not speak to me at all for two weeks (like refused to look at me if I tried talking to her) and now— it’s been about a month— she’s speaking but does not want me to be around anyone she knows without covering my arm.

When people come over to the house I have to cover my arm, when I go out to local shopping centres where I might run in to people she knows, at a wedding I’m going to soon etc.

Her mom then gives her reasoning behind it.

She’s saying all this because she’s terrified of people gossiping about her, every time I bring it up she says stuff like “I don’t want to hear it from everyone, they’re all going to talk about it.”

This is probably partially true.

Definitely not to the extent she thinks it’s going to be (literally no one cares that much about me) but I do come from a super judgmental family who will definitely think it’s stupid and make comments about it to me (my mum for some reason thinks they’ll think she’s a bad parent or something? not sure but she clearly thinks it’s on her for some reason)

OP then explains the strains this is putting on her, and the family dynamic.

Now I’m not totally opposed to covering up however it is the middle of summer rn and like 36C almost every day so it’s super impractical. The biggest thing though is more about how terrible it makes me feel.

I know it’s like irrational or whatever but having to cover up makes me feel like I’m this disgusting person who shouldn’t be around people and I hate it. This tattoo is a part of me and it’s s****y that that ‘part of me’ is so terrible I can’t let people see it.

And she really couldn’t care less about the extended family.

The people she’s trying to impress (all my extended family) are not particularly great people and I don’t respect or care about what they think of me so I don’t care if they talk s*** about it.

I’ve kinda stuck to my guns here and told her I’m not doing that and she’s gotta accept me for it however every single conversation we’re having now is just an never ending argument.

I don’t know, I don’t feel like I’m the AH but my she keeps saying stuff like “that’s the rule when you live with me” (although she still would want me to cover up around her family if i did move out) any external opinion could help.

What do we think? That’s a pickle inside a pickle.

People were pretty torn here.

One person’s ESH came with a great one-liner.

Another person with tattoos voted ESH.

While one person felt really strongly about their NTA.

One commenter kept it right down the middle with some great advice.

This Lave, Leugh, Luve tattoo will look so awesome.

WHY DON’T YOU LOVE IT, MOM!?

If you liked that story, check out this post about a group of employees who got together and why working from home was a good financial decision.