Western Glamour: Russia’s New Ideal : Lifestyles: The female body politic wants to become the body beautiful in Moscow, thanks to American ads.

Her broad face red and sweaty, her stubby blond pigtails bouncing wildly, Marina Bosenko, 39, jumped and kicked her way through the hourlong exercise class, keeping her eyes fixed on her instructor’s trim body.

“I want to be pretty,” she said during a pause, “and to look good so I won’t have complexes. I want to be able to wear short skirts instead of special clothes for heavy women. I want to look like Natasha.”

Her role model, exercise teacher Natasha Yakosheva, understood perfectly.

“We see your Western advertisements and want to look like those models,” said Yakosheva, 24, dressed in a form-fitting tank top and black Lycra biking shorts. “Women here think there are no fat people in Italy or America. They, too, want good figures and big chests.”

For years, Communist leaders exhorted their people to overtake the West in industry, agriculture and technology. Now, Russian women are trying to catch up in the realm of fashion, striving toward the standards of beauty as defined by the Western media.

Statues of the no-nonsense Soviet woman striding toward Communist utopia, her beefy, muscular frame sensibly clad in kerchief and apron, still dot the city’s parks. Yet, this concept of beauty has gone the way of the Soviet state--replaced, it seems, by Western chic.

“For a long time, women were androgynous,” said Zoya Krilova, 48, editor-in-chief of the magazine Rabotnitsa (Working Woman). “We didn’t cultivate the idea of feminine beauty because it was more important for women to be good workers and good mothers. We didn’t have the concept that a body could be beautiful.”

Under Communism, Krilova said, “We were always told that we were all the same. But about three years ago, we began to protest this standardization of life. Now, health and beauty are becoming valued. Everyone is trying to find and express an individual style.”

This emerging sensibility is underscored by glamorous Western images. Super models smile from gold-framed advertisements in windows along Moscow’s main shopping street. Bikini-clad blondes pose provocatively on posters in subway stations. And Barbie, that plastic embodiment of perfection, beams from the side of a city bus painted bubble-gum pink.

“When I first began working here, most women didn’t worry about cosmetics because they thought makeup was too expensive,” said Ludmila Gatonok, who has worked for 19 years at a state-owned cosmetics store that sells imported Lancome products. “But now, makeup is considered necessary.”

As shoppers lingered by the store’s glass display cases, checking their reflections in the mirrored walls, Gatonok smiled knowingly. “When women see all your advertisements, they want to be thin, not fat, and they want to make sure their teeth and face are as pretty as possible,” she said. “They try in any way possible to become like the models they see.”

The 200 women who attend fat-measuring sessions and aerobic classes--at a monthly cost of 490 rubles, or roughly a quarter of the average monthly wage--at the Shaping Center in northwest Moscow know exactly how their bodies compare with model form.

Each month, they receive a computer printout detailing how many extra grams of fat and unneeded centimeters they carry on each part of their bodies. For comparison purposes, the Shaping Center has defined the ideal figure as the average measurements of competitors in various Russian beauty contests.

“We want to help them achieve a nice, womanly figure,” said Irina Petrova, the center’s doctor.

Over the last year, at least half a dozen shaping centers have opened here, catering to the busy Muscovite who wants to tone her body in just a few hours a week.

“There’s no question that Western advertisements are inspiring Russian women to exercise and to wear different makeup,” said Bruce Macdonald, the Moscow-based director-general of BBDO Marketing, an international advertising firm.

Tatyana Zaslavskaya, president of the Russian Center of Public Opinion and Market Research, agreed that the influx of Western media “without a doubt has changed the image of beauty here, especially for young people. They’re now striving to Europeanize themselves.”

And that is just fine with men like Vladimir Ovchinko, 35, a security guard.

“These advertisements are important because they push women--not only Russian women but all women--to take care of themselves, to try new makeup and hairstyles,” he said as he leaned on a railing outside an Estee Lauder cosmetics shop, appreciatively studying a glossy advertisement depicting a flawless model lying on a beach.

“Women should always strive to look better and better,” he added. “It’s absolutely crucial.”

Yet by emphasizing cosmetics, nice clothes and taut muscles, the influx of Western images has widened the gulf between haves and have-nots in Russia’s increasingly stratified society.

Although everyone can see advertisements hanging in Western stores on Tverskaya Street, only the well-off can afford to buy the imported products.

At Estee Lauder, lipstick costs 250 rubles, about one-eighth the average monthly salary here. In a government store, a tube of gummy lipstick sells for only 10 to 15 rubles, but colors are generally limited to dull pink and brownish red.

“There’s a certain point when you cross the line, when instead of presenting models for people to aspire to, you’re presenting things that are irritatingly unattainable,” said Macdonald.

In a 1990 poll, only 14% of women said they worked so they could enjoy an independent income; 80% said they needed their salaries to support their families. Since then, rocketing inflation has further eroded discretionary spending.

Unable to buy cosmetics or perfume, many Russian women say they feel hopelessly un-chic compared to their Western counterparts.

“When they see a good lifestyle on the television screen, of course they strive for that, but they can’t achieve it,” said Leila Vasilieva, who coordinated the poll for the Russian Center of Public Opinion and Market Research.

Taxed with cleaning, washing, cooking, finding food and holding down full-time jobs, even women with spare rubles often do not have time to exercise regularly, shop for themselves or spend hours applying makeup.

“They see Western women feeding themselves, dressing well and living on their own so easily, and they envy that,” Vasilieva said. “They see that others have a high quality of life, and they don’t.”

Ludmila Dolgonovskaya, a 24-year-old student, was blunter.

“Russian women consider themselves worse than American women. They feel inferior because they can’t take care of themselves as they would like to,” Dolgonovskaya said as she passed a line of two dozen women waiting to enter the Yves Rocher beauty salon and cosmetics shop.

Pressing her face against the window, Dolgonovskaya--stylishly dressed in a long black coat and colorful silk scarf--stared at the salon’s wall ads, from which half a dozen tanned, perky models flashing even, white teeth smiled back at her.

“I envy them a little because I can’t look like that--I simply don’t have that option,” Dolgonovskaya said.

“Here, the water is bad for your skin,” she added, pointing to a rash on her heavily rouged cheeks.

“The diet is also bad and even clothes are a problem; the smallest items are hard to get,” she said, revealing her crooked, half-rotted teeth.

Of course, some remain blithely immune to social pressure.

“When a Russian woman knows she’s big and fat, and she sees a thin model on a videocassette, she’ll probably think, ‘There’s no way I’ll ever look like that,’ ” said Tamara Shuknova, manager of a dating service that matches Russian women and foreign bachelors.

“In that case, she’ll remember the Russian proverb, ‘There’s a buyer for every ware.’ And then she’ll be satisfied to sit there and get even fatter and wait for her buyer,” Shuknova added. “It’s this kind of mentality that saves us from getting complexes.”