Would you ever ask a group of total strangers to rate your body?
Comedian Sara Benincasa will play a woman who does just that in her new short film, "The Focus Group."
Benincasa and co-directer Adam Wirtz are currently raising money on Kickstarter to create the short film, in which a woman has her body evaluated and her "flaws" pointed out by a team of people hired to critique her.
The film's main character is a woman who is 34 years old, 5'3" and 175 pounds -- the age, height and weight of Benincasa herself, who will play said character.
"I am not supposed to tell you my age, I am not supposed to tell you my height and I am not supposed to tell you my weight," Benincasa says in a video introducing the project. "Because I'm a lady, and those are private, secret lady things."
Benincasa is breaking a taboo by sharing these facts about herself. In the film, the main character will appear in "various states of undress" in front of a focus group to found out "how she can be prettier, and better, and more attractive and more palatable to the mass audience she is trying to appeal to, aka dudes."
"I was inspired to do 'The Focus Group' because it struck me that having one's body analyzed in such a fashion would be an absolute nightmare," Benincasa told The Huffington Post. "I learned early on in my classes at [comedy club] the PIT to follow the fear -- go for what scares you."
Benincasa hopes that the film will make people laugh, but also make people feel better about their bodies and less alone in the world.
She told HuffPost: "My message is that even when you see room for change, you've got to love yourself exactly as you are."
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