Did a high schooler push Hillary Clinton into being a politician?

(Image credit: Getty Images)

published 17 February 2016

Hillary Clinton didn't always want to be a politician — there was a time she wanted to be an astronaut, a teacher, a physicist, a journalist, and a lawyer. In fact, it took her a long time to finally jump into politics, as a new profile in Vogue notes, and it may have all come down to a pivotal moment in a high school gym:

One day at a town hall in Urbandale, Iowa, a 13-year-old girl gets up and asks Clinton when she first decided to run. Here she tells a story about how, when she was at the tail end of her tenure as first lady, she was encouraged to try for Daniel Patrick Moynihan's seat in the Senate. She resisted for months. And then one day, she went to an event in New York City honoring female athletes that was centered on a documentary called Dare to Compete. "I was at this high school," she says, "and the captain of this basketball team, a very impressive young woman, introduced me, and so I went up to the podium, and she was a lot taller than me, and she bent over and she said, 'Dare to compete, Mrs. Clinton. Dare to compete.' I went, 'Oh, my gosh.' I was just dumbfounded. Because I spent a lot of my time encouraging young women to really pursue their dreams, to go as far as they could, break the glass ceiling, and here was this young woman calling me out! And that's when I told myself, 'You better think seriously about this.'" [Vogue]

While it wasn't a snap decision by any means — "deciding was hard" — Clinton said that she realized, "I've gone around telling women to at least consider challenges and opportunities, to try to figure out whether they're for you."

"And I'd just been saying no — keeping it all at bay, being polite, but totally negative about it," Clinton said. "And then when that young athlete said, 'Dare to compete,' I thought: OK."

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Jeva Lange was the executive editor at TheWeek.com. She formerly served as The Week's deputy editor and culture critic. She is also a contributor to Screen Slate, and her writing has appeared in The New York Daily News, The Awl, Vice, and Gothamist, among other publications. Jeva lives in New York City. Follow her on Twitter.