Um, no to the first statement. You're mistaking trying to maintain health with the desire to maintain a record of your life. Preserving memories using journals, cameras, etc., are excellent ways to provide a reminder of the continuity of a life, particularly when memories begin to fade.

"Only a snapshot" is bad, but "only a memory"? It's by memory that we become sentient beings. Is there anything that you know that you were able to preserve without memory? Are you even able to think without relying on your memory?

Odd as it may sound, there are people who put some effort into using nothing but photos to maintain a life history. A life history shared with friends, but particularly family. "Here we are in Eygpt, where I became pregnant with you." There's nothing wrong in using photographs to preserve or enhance or even rekindle memories. There's nothing wrong in using nude photographs to preserve or enhance or even rekindle memories.

Somewhere, I think, I have photos of my right leg a couple of days before amputation. A grisly and grotesque photo. But a record of the complex feelings that I still have about being nothing but a torso. If you don't understand why someone would want to preserve a memory so ugly, I suppose that I can respect that.

It seems as if - and I may be completely wrong - there's an immediate reaction in some of these replies that equates nudity, or nude photos, with something bad. That there's not enough body shame in someone who would allow, even desire, to capture their body at a moment in time when we might even like the way that we look. I can"t speak for the OP but, personally, I liked my body for most of my life. I liked that other people liked it, too, and that I often returned the degree of satisfaction. I was never a narcissist, I liked to stay fit but didn't spend hours at the gym everyday. It never occurred to me that being comfortable was abnormal.

But that doesn't seem to be the prevailing attitude in the replies. I think what makes some of the replies creepier than others is in blaming the OP instead of the person who circulated the photos. "She was wearing a tight, short dress, judge." That changes everything, case dismissed.

To the summation - the four things that baffle me about your message:

1. The implication that memories are somehow of lesser importance than ____? What? That's the blank that I can't fill. If something is "only a memory" then the implication is that memory is less than, what? Cracker Jacks? Arm wrestling?

2. The idea that there is something perverse in creating a contemporaneous record - a "snapshot" - that can be used to create a memorable continuum for personal use or to share in the future, after the time/event is passed.

3. The thinking that nudity, especially when recorded by camera, is shameful. That preserving the memory of your body at any particular time is wrong. That you can preserve memories of you 26-year-old body best through, something that I don't understand, exercise? Having Dorian Gray spot you?

4. The idea that the victim got what they deserved. That the OP, being guilty of preserving an image of themselves at a specific time of life and lacking shame, is as or more guilty than the person who distributed the images.

I just don't "get it." I don't see how these four observations can be justified, but I'll remain open minded.