STYLE : Reality Wear : For many women, buying a bathing suit is the worst thing they do all year. Donna Russell of Ventura Bikini Shop comes to their rescue.

Donna Russell probably doesn’t think of herself as a social scientist or a self-image consultant.

She just makes and sells bathing suits.

But from her vantage point behind the counter of Ventura Bikini Shop--the no-nonsense store she started eight years ago that is now sandwiched between restaurants at the Ventura Harbor Village--Russell has seen enough to fill volumes.

“The sad thing is that it really doesn’t matter what women look like,” she says, standing next to the sewing machine she uses to make custom-designed bathing suits for customers who insist that nothing, absolutely nothing they’ve found on department store racks makes them look good.

“No matter what shape they’re in, the majority of them still think they look awful in a bathing suit,” she says. “And for a lot of them, buying a suit is the worst thing they do all year. Truly. The whole thing is just a terrible experience.”

Russell isn’t just talking about the emotional toll of driving from mall to mall, trying on suit after suit, then walking away from the piercing eyes of the saleslady who says lugubriously, “Oh . . . nothing was quite right?”

She’s not even talking about the embarrassment of returning to the same store the next day, of slinking in with some bizarrely twisted mind-set that says maybe, just maybe, that blue-and-white number you didn’t try on yesterday would have been perfect.

She’s not even concerning herself with the humiliation of paying $120 for a designer suit that covers the necessary square footage of flesh, but carries the label: “Chemicals contained in pool water, hot tubs, suntan lotions and perspiration are unkind to the high quality fabrics, dyes and elastic of your swimsuit. . . .”; the put-this-on-but-don’t move-in-it suit.

No, what she’s talking about is acceptance. The kind that doesn’t disappear with the addition of 10 pounds. About dignity--the type that doesn’t fold up in the presence of an 18-year-old.

“We do quite a few fashion shows, but I try never to have very many models in the store at the same time,” Russell says on the subject of dignity. “It kills sales. They see these little hard-bodies and say, ‘Forget it.’ They won’t even come out of the dressing room.”

This isn’t about women with gross deformities. This is about women with padding on their behinds, a bit of flesh on their hips and maybe a stretch mark or two from having had kids.

Ordinary women who don’t live in a gym.

But it is rare, Russell says, that she gets a customer with a gentle view of herself: the woman who walks in and says, “OK, help me to look my best.”

Russell--who at 44 has the liquid, resonant laughter and relaxed bearing of such a woman--doesn’t profess to know where distorted self-images begin. But she wasn’t surprised to hear that research supports the idea that women tend to have inaccurate views of themselves.

One study, for instance, involved tracing women’s silhouettes and then increasing and decreasing the size of the silhouettes with a machine. Women were then asked to choose which silhouette was theirs. In the majority of cases, the study found, women chose an outline that was at least 15 pounds heavier than they really were. Men, on the other hand, tended to choose a silhouette that was thinner.

The subject of men, Russell says, is a book in itself. Although her store carries women’s swimsuits--the majority of them made on-site and in sizes that can be mixed and matched--plenty of boyfriends and husbands come in to be part of the purchase.

“Sometimes you can see that it just kills her,” she says. “He’ll stand there and say, ‘You’d wear that ?’ or ‘Don’t even come out of the dressing room with that on.’ ”

The jewel of a man, the kind Russell says she has been with for 16 years, would see the same woman quite differently. “Again, it doesn’t matter what the woman looks like, whether she’s fat or thin,” she says. “She’ll try on suits and he’ll say, ‘I don’t know which one. They all look great on you.’ ”

But then there is the chicken-or-egg question that Russell knows must be asked: Does a woman get low self-esteem from being with someone who doesn’t accept her, or does she choose a person who doesn’t accept her because she already has low self-esteem?

“I don’t know, but wouldn’t it be nice to see women feel OK about themselves and not get so tormented?” she asks. “I’d be out of business, of course,” she adds with a laugh, “but it still would be nice.”

For the time being, business appears to be good. On a recent afternoon, the store was filled with customers.

Debby Lilly, a Ventura mother of a 6-month-old baby girl, Jacqueline, was shopping with two friends for a slimming bathing suit to wear on an upcoming island vacation. She tried on a black one-piece then decided to forget it for the day.

But she did make a purchase.

“I’m having a custom suit made for the baby,” she said, lifting her daughter out of the stroller. “She’ll be the prettiest baby on the beach.”