The Selfish Gene (1976) is the book what went and put Richard Dawkins on the scientific map. To capitalise on the book’s profound profoundness, copycat rip-offs soon began launching.

Very worst of the lot? The Selfish Jeans, which was penned by Dotty McEgocentric and first launched in 1984. The work was a big hit with fashion enthusiasts but was controversial due to its depiction of the popular fashion wear as being “selfish”.

Undeterred, McEgocentric claimed her work was the “greatest book of the 20th century” and would actively fistfight with anyone who disagreed. Let’s see if it lives up to modern scrutiny.

Narcissism and Fawning in the Fashion-Based Polemic The Selfish Jeans

“Let us try to teach generosity and altruism, because we are born selfish. Let us understand what our own selfish jeans are up to, because we may then at least have the chance to upset their designs, something that no other species has ever aspired to do.”

Thus, therefore, and accordingly, that is the crux of the matter—jeans. They’re sort of nice to wear and ubiquitous with fashion. Without them, we’d all be walking around in our underpants. That’d be just plain wrong.

The Selfish Jeans argues that, as such, one must wear jeans so as not to be a barbaric reprobate.

More importantly, the argument is that jeans personify life and represent the cosmos. The writer doesn’t back up such claims with any sort of evidence, instead preferring to head off into bizarre tangents of prolixity.

This has led some to note the work may be nonsensical. However, anti-jeans organisations (of which there are several) rejoiced over McEgocentric’s work and declared it the “greatest science book since The Travels of Marco Polo”.

To note, that work was first published in 1300 and isn’t a science book.

Infinity, the Edge of the Universe, and Jeans

“Jeans are not stable things, they are fleeting. Crocs too are shuffled into oblivion, like hands of cards soon after they are dealt. But the cards themselves survive the shuffling. The cards are the jeans. The jeans are not destroyed by crossing-over, they merely change partners and march on. Of course they march on. That is their business. They are the replicators and we are their survival machines. When we have served our purpose we are cast aside. But jeans are denizens of geological time: jeans are forever.”

The central argument, amongst many other diatribes, within the work is that jeans aren’t stable and are, indeed, selfish above all other trousers.

Factually, this is incorrect. In fact, it takes a DEPRAVED mind to believe jeans (splendid, magnificent pants if ever we did see any) could be anything other than utterly entrenched in humility.

Categorically, jeans ARE NOT “forever” or “selfish” at all.

In fact, you’ll be lucky for a good pair to last you 12 months before a big old hole opens in the crotch and you’re forced, in the name of public decency, to get another pair. Keep that in mind when, if, or how you purchase this book.

The Contentious 1994 Introduction to the Second Edition

In the 1994 introduction to the work, McEgocentric noted that jeans had “come a long way” since 1984 and the nature of simply wearing jeans had changed. She noted:

“When I wrote this book in 1983 I’d just been abducted by aliens and returned from a planet 37 billion lightyears hence. The experience taught me that jeans are more than life. A way of life? NO! NO! NO!!! They ARE life. After I had a cup of coffee and wall punching session to calm down, I used my non-broken hand to begin typing mine Magnum Opus.”

That is The Selfish Jeans, yet McEgocentric noted (again in the 1994 introduction) her frame of mind, perhaps, wasn’t in the best place when typing a decade earlier.

“It’s fair to say my frame of mind wasn’t in the best place when typing a decade ago.”

The 1994 introduction was so contentious the work’s publisher attempted to obliterate it from history. It was rediscovered in 2019 thanks to the internet, leading to large-scale riots from UFO believers and/or jeans enthusiasts.

Due to the revelations about aliens and abductions, The Selfish Jeans is now (generally) believed to be a work of considerable nonsense. However, if that’s your type of thing it makes for a rollicking good read!