Pinned and Perplexed examines how gender is performed and policed. Makeup, hair adornments, and exaggerated expressions read less as personal choice than as rehearsed compliance—signs of how women’s bodies have long been monitored, corrected, and contained. Whether the figure is a woman or a man in overdone cosmetics, the demand to conform to beauty ideals persists. By blurring gender lines, the painting exposes the absurd rigidity of these roles. It echoes histories of controlling female labor, bodies, and sexuality while broadening the critique to show how all gendered performances remain surveilled and constrained.