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I'm going to start off with my thoughts when we first saw this image in class (which is also the first time I ever saw this image).

At first I only saw the faces on the left and right, then the middle one didn't jump out at me at first, it just snuck up on me. The side images have such bold colors and emotions that the middle face or mask gets unnoticed or becomes secondary. Which connects with the thought of a woman's forced passivity. Historically, and occaisonally contemporarily, gender rules dictated that women not be aggressive or hostile, but that they act their role as the "gentler sex" and sort of fade into the background. If the middle face is indeed a mask that a woman puts on when playing her role then, to me, it succeeded.