Middle-aged feminist rage shocks and amuses Nicci Gerrard reports on how the Cassandra of women's liberation attacked a sister over her footwear and 'three fat inches of cleavage'.

'As far as cosmetics are used for adornment in a conscious and creative way, they are not emblems of inauthenticity . . . It is as well to consider diet and rest for the raw materials of beauty, and use cosmetics chiefly for fun. The cheapest and some of the best fun are the colours used on the stage in greasepaint. Kohl is the best eye make-up, and the cheapest, and can be bought in various forms . . . Instead of following the yearly change of hairstyle, women could find the way their hair grows best and keep it that way . . . '

Germaine Greer,The Female Eunuch

SO GERMAINE Greer doesn't like Guardian columnist Suzanne Moore's 'bird-nest hair', or her 'fuck-me shoes'; nor does she like the way that Moore talks; nor her 'three fat inches of cleavage'. Moore is a 'feminist of the younger school', a 'pouting pundit . . . So much lipstick must rot the brain.'

Greer's now infamous column was provoked by rage over a mistaken reference to her 'hysterectomy scar' in Richard Neville's book about the Sixties, Hippie Hippie Shake, on which Suzanne Moore was asked to comment by the London Evening Standard. Greer has long been a crusader against what she calls 'the craze for' hysterectomies and has written a book about the politics of fertility.

Her column was 'spiked' by the Guardian for being unfair; it has now been carried in a less vituperative form in the Spectator. Even moderated, (the hair and the shoes disappeared), it reads like...