Lululemon is offering a dress that says we can do anything — and look good while doing it. What if we don't want to? (David Joles — Star Tribune/The Minnesota Star Tribune)

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The Lululemon 2-in-1 dress is not just a dress. It is a sleek, form-fitting maxi dress masquerading as a casual, “Oh-this-old-thing?” skirt. It retails for $148, which, in today’s economy, is either a steal or a felony depending on whether you’ve recently had to choose between eggs and therapy.

I first saw the dress on TikTok while checking my teen daughters’ accounts. Then it went viral because, apparently, it is the garment for the modern working woman. It’s a dress you can wear to Sunday brunch with your girlfriends and sprint away from a burning building with a family of cats in your arms. After checking it out, I am calling the Lululemon dress/skirt the Swiss Army knife of fashion. Versatile. Functional. Flattering. A miracle.

But what is it, really?

It is metaphor. It is gendered exhaustion sewn into a silk-blended skirt with a hidden tube top. It is a dress designed for the woman who must be a boardroom boss, a children snack-dispenser, an escape artist, a temptress, a nurturer, a strategist, a chauffeur and — let’s be honest — probably also a therapist, although without the licensing or the paycheck.

I tried the dress on. Not literally — I’m not foolish enough to think Lululemon cut this for a body like mine — but emotionally. I tried it on during my children’s volleyball lessons, while shopping online for my father-in-law’s 90th birthday party and while mentally drafting this column and wondering if I had remembered to move the chicken from the freezer to make chicken alfredo for dinner. The dress fits, in theory, because my entire existence has been styled to be just like it: adaptable, supportive and impossible to wrinkle under pressure.

The problem is, I’m tired of being a Swiss Army knife kind of woman.

This dress tells a story about who women — especially women of color — are supposed to be: present for our partners, endlessly patient with our children, hyper-competent at work and somehow still available to volunteer, bake cupcakes and host book club (even though none of us read the book and the wine is doing the heavy lifting).

We are supposed to do all this while looking like we’ve slept eight hours and exfoliated.

We are, essentially, expected to be a dress that is also secretly a skirt, and while that sounds useful, it’s actually just another outfit designed for containment. The dress doesn’t liberate us. It camouflages the labor. It says, “You can be everything — and look good doing it.” But what if I don’t want to look good doing it? What if I don’t want to do anything?

Behind all of it — the dress, the smile, the multitasking — I am asleep inside. I literally fall asleep everywhere.

Here is what I know: I am not a dress. I am not a skirt. I am not a product engineered to meet the moment. I am a woman doing her best — wildly, imperfectly, beautifully. I do not need more clothing that tells me to do more, be more, smile more. I need space to be seen. I need respect. I need a nap.

And maybe, just maybe, I need a dress that is just a dress.