Kitagawa Utamaro distinguished himself from other bijinga artists through his attentive renderings of women’s physiognomy. In his series A Parent’s Moralizing Spectacles, the artist reflects on what he perceives as the moral decline of contemporary women through ten images, each focused on a character trait and coupled with text written from the perspective of a parent. The young woman in The Self-Possessed Type diligently practices the noble art form of calligraphy but, according to the print’s text, she hides her character flaws behind a facade of propriety—so the artist considers her more deceitful than the rest. The title of each print in the series appears within a pair of spectacles, signifying that each woman is being scrutinized closely, echoing the patronizing gaze of the male artist within a patriarchal society.