You should be benefiting from this too, John. Because equality really is what we seek, not a reversal in dominance, with men scrubbing floors and snivelling for scraps while women subjugate them in their turn. So you should be finding life better, these days. Maybe in private you’re not afraid to say you don’t feel like sex, or that you’re worried about work. Rather than spending a Saturday on football or gardening, you read a book or go for a walk. It could be that in your house both washing the car and cooking the dinner have become shared activities. If you have a son, you might tell him it’s all right to cry. If you have a daughter, I hope you’re dressing her in trousers and encouraging her to ride her bike just as fast and recklessly as her brother does.

I hope that, if you feel like crying, you feel that you can cry.

Everyone should be benefiting from a changing world. Not that I much care what happens to men – you’ve had things your way for most of evolution, and a bit of emotional repression doesn’t seem like that high a price to pay. But life should be fair.

So, here we are. We’re moving on. This column is going and it’s going to be replaced by something else.

But don’t think feminism has gone, John. Don’t think for a moment that all of the angry women who are left have taken themselves to Greenham Common, or that the world has reached some sort of manageable, workable compromise. We might have pockets of legislation and workplaces and homes where we’re getting there. That doesn’t mean everything is fixed.

My sisters and I are still here. We’re in all shapes and sizes, because women come in all shapes and sizes. We have crewcuts or plaits, six kids or no desire whatsoever to add more to the population of the world. We work in cafes and we’re called to the bar. We’re going nowhere and we’re not going to forget that we are equal to you.

I’ll see you around, John. Remember, wherever you are, a woman is watching.

Leonie x

Part 6: Exposure

Part 6: Exposure

To take a portrait is, in its simplest terms, to capture the essence of a person, using film and light. To go beyond the idea of how a woman thinks she should look takes time and patience, and the subject must have confidence in you. If a relative of the subject looks at a portrait and says, ‘wow’, then you know you’ve done it.

Veronica Moon, Women in Photographs (unpublished)

‘Leonie Barratt’

Veronica Moon

Exhibition Section: Moment of Death

Camera: OM-1

Film: 200 ASA

First published: Observer magazine, October 1984

If you’ve only seen one photograph taken by Veronica Moon, it’s probably this one.