Why on earth would I want to pose nude for a group of photographers?

I'm not a psychologist or an authority on body image. I'm a 50-year-old woman who has suffered with anorexia and body dysmorphic disorder since I was 7 years old.

I've tried therapy and support groups over the past 15 years. Although they have helped tremendously and brought awareness about this disease, I seem to slip back into self-body-hatred periodically. Sometimes it lasts for a few days, sometimes a few months. The time period doesn't matter. What does matter is, even at my age I still struggle with my body. How many women do the same thing? Does it ever end?
 
For a lot of us, the disease begins in early childhood. For some, it happens in pre-pubescence when our young bodies are in a metamorphose stage from child to adult. The psychological damage done to girls is appalling, both as the result of media hype and the unrealistic expectations that society places on women, and through untreated childhood abuse - verbal, physical, emotional and sexual, to which I am no stranger on all counts.