WASHINGTON, April 5 (UPI) -- How a woman feels about her appearance is a timeless problem affecting young and old and a recent apology from a top fashion editor has re-ignited debate about whether the thin trend has gone too far and why designers still ignore the lucrative plus-size market.
American women are pulled in two very different directions. One the one hand, super-size servings of fattening food are abundant and the nation's obesity rate is skyrocketing -- nearly two-thirds of the country is clinically overweight or obese.
On the other hand, celebrities and fashion models continue to shrink, some to a size 0, promoting what many experts say are an unrealistic body goals.
"The insidious thing I think about a lot of these images is that they're constructed images ... so the body you see in that picture may not even be Kate Moss' body," Sharlene Hess-Biber, a sociology professor at Boston College in Boston and author of the 1996 book "Am I Thin Enough Yet?" told United Press International.
While this gap widens further, millions of overweight women wish to dress fashionably but cannot fit into the slim-cut clothes designers put out. The average American woman is a size 14 but many fashion designers and fashion editors refuse to embrace the plus-size market.
"If we just said it's OK who you are, then we wouldn't need to buy, try, and comply," Hess-Biber said. Emphasizing extreme thinness fuels many markets "beyond the fashion market," she said, including fad diets and food as well as plastic surgery market.
For most women whose DNA is not wired to give them a size 2 figure desiring the perfect body is "a goal you can never attain, so you keep buying, trying and complying," she said.
Kate Betts, editor in chief of the fashion bible Harper's Bazaar and former editor in chief of Vogue, touched upon in her mea culpa published this week in The New York Times. Betts apologized for pulling a cover photo of actress Renee Zellweger.
Zellweger was nominated for an Academy Award for her role in the film "Bridget Jones' Diary," in which she plays a plump single looking for love. Even after thousands of dollars of airbrushing, Betts said Zellweger still looked too fat.
Industry pressure, Betts added, was to blame as fashion designers are not interested in the plus-size market because it would stray from the idealized beauty image.
Debbie Then, a social psychologist based in Los Angeles, said Betts and others in the industry are following consumer demand.
"Women are their own worse enemies," Then told UPI. "I don't blame magazines and I don't blame designers because they're really giving consumers what they want."
What consumers want in terms of beauty and fashion is to look more like Britney Spears than Oprah Winfrey, even though Winfrey is one of the nation's richest and most powerful women.
"Fifty-year-old women try to dress like Britney Spears in California," Then said.
Other accomplished women, like First Lady Laura Bush and Sen. Hillary Clinton, D-N.Y., are far from a size 2.
A handful of fashion designers proudly promote their plus-size lines. Liz Claiborne carries career, casual and evening apparel in sizes 14 to 24 as well as a petite plus-size line.
"We have had a fantastic response," a Liz Claiborne spokeswoman told UPI. "This is something that our customers have demanded."
The spokeswoman said even with a strong response others doing join the fray because there still is stigmatism attached to carrying plus-size clothing.
"It's skewed," she said. "I'm surprised, even still, that people are not listening."
Not far from Liz Claiborne's New York office, Barneys, an upscale department store that features many top-notch designers, said it did not carry plus-size clothing and declined to comment.
Then said she is not surprised. Designers and fashion magazine editors know what makes extreme thinness only belongs to a chosen few, making it more desirable to the masses because it is increasingly exclusive as well as elusive.
"As more people become overweight," Then said, "it becomes more valued for people who aren't. It becomes even a more elite club."
Excessive thinness, she added, "becomes a private club that everyone wants to enter."
While models like Kate Dillon, a size 12, have posed for Liz Claiborne -- and Dillion is featured in the April issue of Vogue, which explores body shape -- experts do not see this as a trend toward accepting the more average-built woman.
"The reality is, these women may be sprinkled around some of these magazines, but I do not see a flood or a trend or any kind of movement toward any kinds abatement of this trend, toward thinness," Hess-Biber said. "This is something that's still rewarded in our society."
Then agreed things will yet get worse as women aspire to idealized body types instead of to emulate professionally successful women. Even the most powerful women are harshly criticized for their appearances, Then said.
"They look at Hillary Clinton's butt and say why doesn't she get to a gym?" she said.
Appearance is not a vanity issue, but a survival issue for women, Then added, because beauty and sexual desirability remain so highly rewarded in American society.
"No matter how accomplished, they (women) never stop wanting men's attention or to get noticed and part of how you get that doesn't depend on your paycheck," Then said. "We just live in an unequal society."
