As Lena Dunham’s new show reminds us, whether they’re at work or on a date, women are expected to tone it down if they want to get on. What if they refuse to play ball?

‘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.

After splitting, Fred and Hester decided to sleep with other people – and still be intimate with each other once in a while. Now back together, they’ve never been happier

• How do you do it? Share the story of your sex life, anonymously

Having a break has been great for our sex life

Pop star weds The 1975 drummer, who she has been with for about three years, at Hackney town hall

The pop star Charli xcx and her partner, George Daniel, a drummer in the ban The 1975, have married at a ceremony at Hackney town hall in east London.

The smiling couple were pictured and filmed walking down the art deco building’s steps through a blizzard of confetti on Saturday.

Syria struggling to contain sectarian clashes between Bedouin and Druze fighters

The UK-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR) has said the death toll from violence in the country’s south involving Druze fighters and their Bedouin rivals, as well as government forces, armed tribes and Israel, had topped 1,000.

The war monitor said those killed since last Sunday included 336 Druze fighters and 298 civilians from the religious minority group, 194 of whom were “summarily executed by defence and interior ministry personnel”.

Summer Lates series to feature live performances and DJ sets of disco, funk, gospel and jazz

When night falls and the Great Bath empties of visitors, it usually morphs into a quiet place of glimmering light and shadows. But not at weekends this summer.

DJs and musicians are to set up next to the steaming water and turn the historic space in the city of Bath into something of a party venue.

She made her name in Mean Girls and Sex Lives of College Girls, but it’s her lack of a filter off screen that sent her viral. Ahead of her new album, she talks fame, gossip and Trump’s America – and doesn’t hold back

“I looove to lie,” sighs Reneé Rapp happily, sounding like a kid who has just discovered a new favourite toy. She’s talking about using creative licence in her songs, and how she realised, while working on her second album, that she didn’t have to stick to the truth of her own experience 100% of the time. But for a journalist, the admission – and her apparent glee about it – demands a follow-up: has she lied at all in the last 40 minutes?

I expect Rapp, 25, to wave away the question. Instead she pauses, seeming to give it real thought. “Have I lied? You know, I don’t think so,” she eventually concludes.