I must admit to laughing out loud this morning as I drove to Atlanta.

I’m currently listening to the (very well narrated by Ian Holm) audiobook of The Woman In White by Wilkie Collins. A classic suspense novel - one of the foundational works to which many authors allude when listing their inspirations, yes? Well, it is also the bearer of what I can only label as one of the earliest (the first?) descriptions of what dudebros refer to as “butterface.”

The narrator goes to great lengths to describe a woman, paying close attention to the way she fills the lines of her dress and how shapely a waist she has. Baby got BACK, apparently. Then, as she turns to face the narrator, you can practically hear the needle scratch on the gramophone. He proceeds to describe her “swarthy” complexion, the hair on her upper lip, her “masculine mouth and jawline,” etc. All I could think of was the old Loony Tunes short featuring the knockout who turns around and appears to be wearing a fright mask.

Dudebros gonna dudebro, even in the nineteenth century.

For the record, Marian Halcombe is the strongest and best character in this novel. There would have been no novel without her, IMO.