Ginger Hervey

University of Missouri

When you look back on your high school pictures, it’s easy to see how much you’ve changed. For some, the changes are more striking.

Most transgender people transition after age 18, according to a 2011 study by the National Center for Transgender Equality and National Gay and Lesbian Task Force. In fact, it reports,95% of male-to-female and 92% of female-to-male transition after they've finished up their teen years.

Cole Young, a rising junior at the University of Missouri, knows this story well; he transitioned from female to male in college. But when he looks back at photos, he says, he sees the person he no longer is. That's why he decided, as a "really a selfish thing," he says, to do something about it.

Young teamed up with Emmitt Wright, a recent MU graduate with an interest in photography, to shoot a series of portraits that show Young as he is now, and when he presented as female in his senior year of high school, accompanied by questions and answers about gender.

But the then the effort widened.

After receiving positive feedback, the duo continued the project with other trans students at Mizzou; another series of portraits are set to be released in a few weeks.

“We realized, 'Hey, we can use this as an advocacy tool,'” Young says. “It’s a way for trans people to share their stories in their own words. ... A lot of people have reached out to me and said that what I said resonated with them and was similar to their story, and that’s great."

But it had another effect, he says. "There (have also been) some really great comments like, ‘I had never thought about any of this, I really learned some things.’”

Wright says he had mostly taken the project on "because I wanted to learn, so I thought it would be a great opportunity to educate myself, but it’s become so much more than that. Cole and I are definitely interested in making this a work of activism.”



Ginger Hervey is a student at University of Missouri-Columbia and a USA TODAY College correspondent.

This story originally appeared on the USA TODAY College blog, a news source produced for college students by student journalists. The blog closed in September of 2017.