Two years ago, several Seattle women joined forces to create a multimedia production about a touchy subject for many females: physical self-esteem.

Calling their alliance the bodyBody project, for their 2003 Theatre Off Jackson show, playwright Vanessa McGrady contributed the fanciful play "Aphrodite Raves"; Kathlyn Albright provided the short film "Beyond the Body"; and Amanda Koster lent the most impressive element with her photo display of female nudes in various sizes, "This Is Beautiful."

Now the trio is back again with another show about the pesky concern of how to love one's own (imperfect) physique.

Last year, in "The Good Body," Eve Ensler ("The Vagina Monologues") dealt with the same touchy issue in a workshop run of the Broadway-bound piece at Seattle Repertory Theatre.

But it's getting harder to find fresh ways to dramatize the subject — unless, as in Neil LaBute's controversial Off Broadway hit, "Fat Pig," you're willing to settle for an unhappy finale about the triumph of peer pressure.

In the Empty Space Theatre's lobby, bodyBody's sunnier exploration begins with a new array of Koster's jubilant and wary photos of nude women, cavorting and posing in a dance studio.

But the centerpiece here is McGrady's "You Can't Tell By Looking," a stage comedy interwoven with segments of "What a Body!," another candid, "talking heads" docu-film by Albright.

Now playing "BodyBODY: You Can't Tell by Looking" by Vanessa McGrady. Thursdays-Sundays through Feb. 12 at Empty Space Theatre, 3509 Fremont Ave. N., Seattle; $15 (http://www.bodybodyproject.com/ or 800-838-3006).

The new show doesn't break any ground. The women on view express the mixed emotions — anger, pride, sardonic humor, vulnerability — felt by many gals who have a plus-size body in an anorexic fashion world. Or any other physical trait that sets them apart from the near-unreachable media ideal of beauty.

That point is probed most humorously and insightfully in Albright's film, when a witty woman of mixed racial heritage talks about her "problem" hair.

The two-act "You Can't Tell By Looking," directed by Kate Jaeger, also uses humor to probe hang-ups — at length.

An "Arrested Development"-style dysfunctional family sitcom with earnest accents, the play considers two adult sisters in neat contrast: One is a pencil-slim, cranky, ambitious TV celeb, Vicki (Angela Di Marco), the other a plump, wisecracking bohemian artist, Bibi (Mercedes Creelman).

At a birthday party for their (what a coincidence!) plastic surgeon dad, Mac (G.S. Michaels), the sibs spar, snipe and jest with a zany, hippie-dippy aunt (isn't there one in every sit-com clan?), Sylvia (Betty Campbell), and an amorous Irish suitor (David S. Hogan, whose hyper-animation injects some welcome vitality).

The play isn't a snore, but it's crammed with stock characters and contrived dilemmas: a surprise pregnancy, a sudden stroke, an easily-guessed revelation about parentage and many one-liners — funny, and thudding.

In the end everyone forgives everyone else, family feuds are patched up handily. And Mac even promises to stop bugging Bibi to "lose a few pounds." Which, one could say, is progress.

Misha Berson: mberson@seattletimes.com