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Press takes a ringside seat in spat between two of Britain's most high-profile columnists. Helen Birch reports
' Hair bird's- nested all over the place, f*** me shoes and three fat inches of cleavage. . . So much lipstick must rot the brain '
Greer (left) on Moore
' This is not a row between me and Germaine, but between Germaine and the Guardian '
Moore (right) on Greer
"War of the wimmin", "Slugging it out in a lipstick war", the headlines said.
The so-called "cat fight" was between two of Britain's most high-profile feminists, 56-year-old Germaine Greer, Cambridge academic and author of The Female Eunuch, the book that launched a thousand consciousness-raising sessions, and 36-year-old Suzanne Moore, columnist of the year 1994, acclaimed as a populist writer on social and political issues. Until this week, both women had columns in the Guardian.
On Sunday, Greer submitted what amounted to a personal attack on her fellow columnist for publication in her Monday slot. "Moore," she wrote, "the pouting pundit of the Tuesday tabloid . . . {Moore's column actually appears on Thursdays} is a feminist of the younger school", who has "hair bird's-nested all over the place, fuck-me shoes, and three fat inches of cleavage . . . So much lipstick must rot the brain."
She accused Moore, who is from a working-class background, of being unable to talk "proper", incapable of getting a sentence out without punctuating it with "you know, and "I mean".
"Women who smoke," she added, "let alone women who smoke as much as...