High School Senior Wins The Internet With Her Badass Yearbook Quote

If my high school yearbook had senior quotes, I clearly didn’t say anything life-changing, because I have no recollection of it. Caitlyn Cannon is a California high school student who will not have this problem though. Her yearbook quote has gone viral for the best possible reasons, and it’s doubtful that she or anyone else will be forgetting it anytime soon.

“I need feminism because I intend on marrying rich and I can’t do that if my wife and I are making .75 cent for every dollar a man makes.” She manages to put a twist on the sexist stereotype of women marrying for money while proudly proclaiming who she is and taking a stab at the wage gap. Boom.

A close friend of Caitlyn’s shared her yearbook photo on Tuesday, and in three days it’s been retweeted over 10,000 times. Her photo on Tumblr has received over 50,000 notes. Cannon told The Huffington Post that she found the quote on Tumblr, and changed the parts that were written from a man’s perspective. She says, “I was tired of seeing the same old quotes from popular books and movies and authors, and I wanted to call attention to a problem that women face. I’ve never really been ashamed to say that I am gay, so the LGBT aspect was simply who I am.”

You know when people ask you that question about whether you’d want to turn back time, and you inevitably have to answer that yes, you’d love your 18-year-old body again, but you’d never want to go back to where you were mentally? Well, Cannon has a head start on this whole “life” thing. She’s doing it right. Becoming proudly comfortable with who you are is something that people struggle with way into adulthood — and sometimes never achieve. Same with the ability to fearlessly speak one’s mind.

Cannon’s planning on attending college in NYC in the fall.

Related post: Everything I Needed To Know About Parenting I Learned In High School