It's that time of year again when Sports Illustrated graces us with their annual swimsuit edition giving men everywhere a decent and respectable medium to jerk off to. At six dollars a pop, it's simply the best deal in town (with the exception of the Victoria's Secret Catalog, which comes twice a month for free). Why Sports Illustrated bothers to publish all those other issues during the year is beyond me.

This year's cover model, Rebecca Romijn, is a blonde-haired, blue-eyed beauty of Dutch descent. Best known for her current stint as host of MTV's House of Style (and being a blonde-haired, blue-eyed beauty), Rebecca was born in 1972 in Berkeley California, and raised by parents whose lifestyle was firmly entrenched in hippie culture.

It appears that Romijn (pronounced Romijn) is somewhat of a natural for the swimsuit thing. As she explains, her family was heavily into nudism. "When my high school dates used to pick me up," she says, "Dad would open the door completely naked." As scary of a thought as this may be, I'm sure it didn't totally dissuade Rebecca's suitors from courting the 5'10" 35-24-35 supermodel-in-training.

So how did Romijn gravitate from best looking gal in town to high-profile celebrity? As legend has it, Rebecca signed up with a San Francisco modeling agency in 1995 after a year of studying brain surgery at the University of California at Santa Cruz. Two months later it was goodbye books, thank you good looks, hello Paris.

Romijn worked the runways, appeared on the cover of French Elle, and wound up residing in Paris for over two years. Her career has since been on somewhat of an uphill trajectory. She has appeared in numerous Victoria's Secret catalogs, donned the covers of magazines such as GQ and modeled for companies such as Tommy Hillfiger and Miller Lite. In addition, she has been voted one of the 50 Most Beautiful People by People magazine. Currently, you can catch her, of course, on the cover of Sports Illustrated – and you don't even have to get past Papa Romijn to get a view of the fair-haired Californian beauty.