Attention all students. National Geographic is about to join the likes of Sports Illustrated, Maxim and GQ. Seems unlikely, but it is true. National Geographic is publishing a collector’s edition titled, “Swimsuits: 100 years of pictures.”

We don’t know about you, but this seems a little out of character for the factual and informative magazine that normally contains articles about the pyramids or the bushmen of Africa. If you have seen the cover of this new edition of National Geographic then you know that you won’t be reading anything about the pyramids or some new discovery.

The cover will feature a female in a swimsuit that consists of three cockle shells held together by string. Two shells are used for the top of the bikini and one shell is used for the bottom. This suit definitely doesn’t leave much to the imagination.

What happened to the National Geographic of old? This collector’s edition seems to be a ploy to get a younger crowd to pick up the magazine using the all powerful sex symbol: a woman in a bikini. However, the provocative picture on the cover is a bit misleading.

Inside, you should find pictures of swimsuits dating back to 1900. The pictures include old ladies, men, young children, the occasional bikini model and a few photographs of topless native women. This is definitely not what the cover insinuates. Most readers would expect to see skimpy, wet bikinis on beautiful women.

National Geographic is known around the junior high schools as the only magazine that the school library carries that contains nude women. However, this is not apparent from the covers of past magazines and the photos have never been sexual in nature.

According to a staff writer for the Christian Science Monitor, “Few of the images have much titillation value. Flipping through the feature — a decade-by-decade look at changing fashions and attitudes–is more apt to produce laughs, amazement and nostalgia, as well as a longing for the beach.”

This is good news for those who respect the academic nature of the magazine, but for those of you who expected to see more provocative swimsuits, you are better off buying Sports Illustrated. Nonetheless, a respectable magazine has resorted to using sex as a means to grab the attention of its readers.

We hate to use the word sell-out, but what the heck: National Geographic has sold out to the sex driven advertisement industry of America. Let’s hope this isn’t a permanent addition to their annual issues.