High school senior’s ‘Mulan’ ID photo goes viral

How long had June Kyra Dela Chica been planning her senior year school ID photo?

This is the 17-year-old’s all-caps explanation on Instagram this week, where she posted the picture that has taken the Internet by storm.

“I’VE WAITED MY ENTIRE HIGH SCHOOL CAREER TO DO THIS AND AM PROUD TO SAY I HAVE BROUGHT HONOR TO THE FAMILY (hopefully)”

Dela Chica is a senior at Aloha High School in Beaverton, Ore., where it didn’t take much to convince the photographer to let her take her photo made up like the matchmaker in Disney’s “Mulan.”

The photo quickly went viral, with Seventeen magazine giving her queenly props: “Respect, girl.”

“Once the makeup was on, I moved my way to the pictures station and lined up,” Dela Chica told Buzzfeed.

“One of the ladies was very open-minded and laughed; the other lady — who was actually taking my photo — was very grumpy and rude tbh. I remember her saying, ‘I don’t know if you can take this photo. Are the admins OK?’

“I replied with, ‘The admins said if I’m OK with showing my face like this to hundreds of people then go on ahead. And if it’s really THAT bad I can always retake it.’ She shrugged and replied with a simple OK.”

She told KPTV in Portland that she’d been waiting to do this since her freshman year, when she saw then-seniors dress up in their pictures at orientation.

She posted the results on Instagram.

She also posted it on Twitter, where her photo has been retweeted more than 100,000 times.

Understatement of the year: “This is the start of a good senior year.”

This story was originally published August 26, 2016 at 1:37 PM with the headline "High school senior’s ‘Mulan’ ID photo goes viral."