“It’s okay to love me,” is a phrase Olympia Perez, 23, never wants to say. She transitioned to female a few years ago. She is bored by the stigma around dating trans people. To people who fear being in a relationship with her because they don’t understand transgender people she wants to yell: “It’s okay to love me!” To those who feel by dating her they are a champion for transgender rights, someone to be admired and applauded, she wants to give them the side-eye and say, “It’s okay to love me…”

Olympia reached out to other trans people to get their perspectives and arrange a photo shoot. With Interrupt collaborators Laurel Golio, photographer of We Are the Youth, and Alexis Casson and Mursi, directors of the web series The Peculiar Kind, they came together to produce the “It’s Okay to Love Me” photo shoot, featuring five transgender young adults living in New York City.

We asked our alluring models — Nazira, Mackenzie, Amos, Olympia, and Tahj — “What does love do for you?”