‘I can be a bit much,” a friend said to me. A group of us were in a cafe discussing the first date she had scheduled for later that day, and she was worried about how she might come across. It wasn’t the first time I had heard a woman label herself as “too much”, “intense” or “a lot”. I expect even the most feminist of women have found themselves wondering, like the newly single Jessica (Megan Stalter) in Lena Dunham’s new Netflix show, Too Much, whether they would be better off if they just toned it down.
Thanks to the lingering presence of “weirdly archaic feminine ideals”, says the author Amy Key, many women still believe that being “a contained, neat person” will make them more desirable on a date, or at work, or in social situations. “That is linked to the idea of the space that you occupy too,” she adds, whether that’s the metaphorical “space” that you command in conversations or the physical size of your body. The unspoken rule, in both cases, is that less is better.
