Standing in a department store, the speaker looks at ballgowns and can't make sense of them. One looks like armor, another like a mermaid's tail, and both seem to make dancing clumsy or impossible. From there the questions widen. Women already carry plenty, she says: dishes, calendars, lovers, babies. Why add more? She points out the irony that we condemn burkas and bound feet as oppression, yet we let fashion wrap us up like mummies or foil-covered salmon.
The tone starts out wry and teasing, then turns more serious as the speaker describes ordinary lives squeezed tight and worn down by endless dirty floors. The ending shifts into longing. She imagines dancing in loose silk scarves, or in bare skin, with no bones or stays, free on a moonlit, flower-strewn ground. The final mood is hopeful, even tender, though she admits this freedom may live only in fantasy.