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There is one sort of snake that lives in the area where Miss Poubelle grew up that is known as a puff adder. A puff adder is really a quite harmless snake, but when a predator approaches, it inflates its body, hisses loudly, and strikes. Puff adders can also roll over and play dead, even allowing a bit of blood to drip from their mouths, and emitting a deadly stench. The puff adder knows that creating a false impression is vital to its survival.

For much of history, gay men have been forced into similar survival strategies. To avoid bigotry and violence, they have been forced to present a false face to the world. So it is interesting that one of the most common terms for gay men in Australia, poofter, has an origin that is related to this ability to deceive the world around us.

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Poofter is an extended form of the term poof, and poof, in turn, is a variant pronunciation of puff. Puff comes originally from puff of air, extended in various ways. Applied to a person, puff can refer to people who "puff up" their own reputation or the reputation of others. So one sense of puff means "flatterer," as in the following quote from 1751: "Lady Hervey, who is your puff and panegyrist, writes me word... that you dance very genteellly." We see a relic of this sense in the journalistic slang "puff piece," which is applied to a overly flattering interview or review.

Related to this sense of puff is another, referring to what we would usually call a shill, that is someone who is known to a salesman or gambler but who poses as a stranger in order to encourage others to part with their money. So in one 1731 quote, a writer mentions "two Puffs, who have money given 'em to decoy others to play." The common thread here is the idea that a puff is someone who presents a false face to the world.

The earliest use of poof or puff to apply to gay men is from around 1850: "So these monsters in the shape of men, commonly designated Margeries, Pooffs, etc."

Poof and puff seem to have originally applied to gay men because they were like the shills and flatterers of the day, presenting a false appearance to the world.

Poofter is now most commonly applied in Australia to men and boys whose public persona is insufficiently masculine. Chris Pulpick, president of the New South Wales Anti-Discrimination Board, has pointed out that poofter is one of the words which is used to enforce the boundaries of the "Great Aussie Masculinist Culture." David Plummer, who has researched homophobia in Australia, notes that "poofter comes into currency almost universally during primary school and is considered one of the most negative of terms that can be applied to another boy. Significantly, for the first few (crucial) years, 'poofter' and similar terms do not explicit homosexual connotations.... Instead, these terms are applied to boys who are different, particularly those who are softer, academic, less team-sport-oriented, less group-oriented, who differ significantly from the standards of other boys, or who are less restrained by gender roles."

That is, boys are expected to present a certain kind of face to the world, whether that matches their own personality or not. Boys who are insufficiently false are labelled with the pejorative term poofter. In one of the ironies common to gay history, those who manage to present a sufficiently acceptable public face escape public censure, but those who are honest about their sexuality are called false.