In the early twentieth century, several American cities passed laws regulating how far a hatpin could protrude from a woman's hat. On its face, it's a strange, almost comic bit of legislative history. Looked at closely, it's something else: a clear, well-documented example of a pattern that shows up again and again — a woman finds some purchase (a weapon, a vote, a diagnosis, a paycheck, an audience) and the people around her work to take it back, not by naming what they're actually defending, but by recasting her as the danger.
Pinned starts there, with the Hatpin Laws, because the record is unusually clear and the metaphor is almost too literal. But the project isn't bound to 1910. It follows the same pattern into suffrage, into the workplace, into reproductive rights, into the way we talk about women online today.
History doesn't simply repeat itself. It leaves patterns.
Pinned examines those patterns — beginning with the Hatpin Laws, and continuing wherever the evidence leads.