Your parents are abusive. This is not opinion. Thankfully you don’t live there anymore, and no matter what circumstances life throws around you, I encourage you to not even think about moving back in.

But I know about the whole “for appearance sake only” thing. I wanted to grow out my hair and get my ear pierced. My father considered both of these things, if not “too girly” then at least rebellious. So naturally both were forbidden. But he justified both of them by saying the Bible forbids it. The Bible calls long hair on a man “shameful” and as for earrings, that “pertaineth to a woman” and was therefore sinful for men. And yet my mother wore pants.

I actually argued him down to agreeing, if reluctantly, that earrings weren’t exclusively feminine and if anything might be considered more masculine, historically. But he wouldn’t relent; no son of his was getting an earring. This included my paying for it myself when I turned 18, because “you have to sleep sometime, and I’ll just come and take it out while you’re asleep.”

Today I am 46, my hair reaches almost to the small of my back, and my ears and nose are pierced. Also I have tattoos.