Too tubby to be gorgeous, so NZ pair get the push

Cartoon / Guy Body

Two New Zealanders who put on weight over Christmas have been expelled from a social networking site that lets only good-looking people sign up.

The rebuff came after they posted their holiday photos on the site.

Members decide on who is allowed to join beautifulpeople.com by voting on a photograph and brief profile of an applicant.

They continue to rate uploaded photos, and members who fall below a certain rating can be removed.

"We responded to complaints by moving the newly chubby members back to the rating stage," the website's New Zealand-raised managing director, Greg Hodge, said from Britain yesterday.

A spokesman for beautifulpeople.com, Remy Le Fevre, says members were expelled to maintain the standard of the site, which was meant only for good-looking people.

About 5000 Kiwis have applied to join the site, but only around 1300 have been accepted. The rest have been voted too ugly.

Mr Le Fevre says the website has about 600,000 members worldwide.

More than 5000 members have been offloaded since Christmas, he says, so the small number of expelled Kiwis show that many New Zealanders are still taking pride in their looks over the summer holidays.

"Their healthy outdoor Christmas mean they haven't over-indulged with comfort food and TV dinners."

The two expelled Kiwis can re-apply to join the site, he says, but their applications will be submitted to the rating process new applicants faced.