The Tyranny of Choice

Cool Water Lily! Now I remember!

One day, Steve was going over to CVS to pick up a prescription. I asked him to buy deodorant for me. “Sure,” he replied. “What kind?” I had stupidly thrown the old one away, and didn’t remember exactly what I had last used. “It’s Secret. I think. And I want the antiperspirant/deodorant.You’ll see it!” And off he went. In a few minutes, I got a text: Did you want solid or gel? Unscented or aloe or floral? What strength? As I responded, it struck me: there are waaaay too many choices in underarm protection products these days.

And don’t get me started on hair care. I remember the few brands on the market in the 1960’s, Breck and Prell and maybe one dandruff shampoo. Now there is a dizzying array of possibilities. I have been getting keratin treatments for my hair for a few years now, which have worked wonders taming my humidity-challenged mane. However, I MUST use a sulfate-free shampoo and conditioner, or apparently the magic disappears (I haven’t dared test this out, but I can imagine accidentally using a shampoo containing sulfates, watching my hair instantly frizz up. Can’t chance it!) So there’s another sub-genre to seek out, and believe me there are tons of choices there as well.

For my birthday last year, Rose gave me a gift subscription to Function of Beauty. This is a company that concocts a formula for shampoo and conditioner just for you, based on your answers on a questionnaire. Every six months, another set of bottles arrives, and I have to say the stuff is fantastic. Smells amazing, and, best of all, it’s all SULFATE FREE! I get a kick out of the label. It reads “Function of Mom.” Can’t get much more personalized than that!

What next? Will cereal and yogurt and laundry detergent makers start devising “just for you” items based on online surveys? And how about books and magazines? I prefer my “Poets and Writers” mag without ANY poetry, and please remove all the scary parts of Stephen King’s novels.

We raise our kids (or at least I tried to raise mine) with the idea that the world does not cater to their every whim, that they need to be resilient and agreeable, a lot of the time, lemonade from lemons, yadda yadda. But then society gives them the very opposite idea. Everything is exactly as they like it, from music (remember enduring the song on the radio that you hated? Nowadays, their playlists are all faves, all the time.) to TV shows (remember watching whatever was on at 8 PM on Wednesday on ABC? Now, with Hulu and Netflix and Google Play and HBO, there’s NO chance you’ll ever be stuck watching anything you don’t adore).

Is there a tyranny of choice these days? Maybe. We do spend an inordinate amount of time making selections, don’t we? Time perhaps better spent elsewhere. But there’s no turning back now. We have met the tyrant, and it is us.

Yes, precisely!