You can freely choose the latest fashion from the choices offered. The fact that most people in old pictures are easily recognized as coming from a specific time shows that there were only a few styles to choose from. We freely choose to all look the same, even if we don’t want to. We still look out of order in a recognizable style. Going against the grain has also its style. We choose between what is on offer, though you might question the freedom in such a forced choice.

The distinguishing feature of advanced industrial society is its effective suffocation of those needs which demand liberation—liberation also from that which is tolerable and rewarding and comfortable—while it sustains and absolves the destructive power and repressive function of the affluent society. Here, the social controls exact the overwhelming need for the production and consumption of waste; the need for stupefying work where it is no longer a real necessity; the need for modes of relaxation which soothe and prolong this stupefication; the need for maintaining such deceptive liberties as free competition at administered prices, a free press which censors itself, free choice between brands and gadgets.Herbert Marcuse, One-Dimensional Man