Look, I should be the last person to criticize someone's physical appearance, what with my high forehead, scarred cheek, splotchy beard, lanky frame and teeth more crooked than the chompers of the Prince of Wales. But the Orange County Register's recent trend to allow its BBR (Big Beautiful Reporters) to write about their weight problems and print accompanying pictures must stop now. On Feb. 19, former Weekly writer Nguyen Huy Vu and longtime Reg obit columnist Robin Hinch filled in readers on their gastric-bypass surgery. Yesterday, it was the turn of staffer Valeria Godines, who doesn't like it that many Latinos consider chubiness sexy or cute. We like Nguyen, Hinch and Godines enough, but stories about reporters with weight problems doesn't move papers. If the Reg wants to use its reporters to spike up circulation, howzabout letting them write good stories? Or better yet: get the Reg gals, whom we once named some of Orange County's sexiest people, to come out on the front page wielding a notebook, smile and little else. We do that with our ad reps, and it works out just fine
