Swimsuit Issue: The Butterfinger Edition

The 50th anniversary edition of Sports Illustrated's swimsuit issue hit newsstands this week, which (inevitably, perhaps) evokes memories of a Golden Age when a bikini-clad blonde eating a Butterfinger was the veritable emblem of hotness.

For many among us, a bikini-clad blonde eating a Butterfinger is still kind of hot. A few of us, however, can't get past the eminently not-hot, sand-in-the-teeth scenario that the image evokes. And so we forever swing, like overly smart geckos in our gilded hammocks, between attraction and repulsion. Am I right?

Ben Cosgrove is the editor of LIFE.com. Picture This is his weekly (and occasionally more frequent) feature for The Stacks.

Photo Credit: Co Rentmeester—Time & Life Pictures/Getty Images