What's in a Name?

Trudy Hodge

Trudy Hodge- African American ancestry; One of Naomi Nichols' closest friends since the 5th grade, Trudy Hodge is a star athlete and top student who is popular and well-liked by many of her peers. She is athletic and participates in a multitude of different sports, which include basketball, track and field and swimming. A crusader for what's right, she is kind-hearted, but lively and opinionated, with a strong moral center and altruistic persona. Described as honest to a fault, she has strong beliefs and can be very direct, having inherited her mother's candor and willingness to tell the truth at all costs. Trudy is outspoken and driven, as well as outgoing and self-confident, and she seems to know what she wants in life. Coming from an upper middle-class family with a mom who works as a Civil Rights Lawyer and father who works as a Petroleum Engineer, she loves advocating to prevent climate change. She has a light-skinned African American mother who was raised in poverty in rural Georgia and a dark-skinned Harlem-born African American father who took odd jobs growing up. He supported himself in a working-class environment and earned everything he now has through diligence and perseverance. Trudy admires her mother and considers her paternal grandmother to be "the strongest woman that she has ever met". She loves to eat soul food with her family members and formerly enjoyed the "Blaxican" cuisine that was served at a popular restaurant she used to visit at her mother's native Georgia. She hopes to follow in her parent's footsteps and become a geologist, although a part of her would also like to do something slightly different and either become an environmental lawyer or study medicine. 

Born and raised in South Carolina for the early part of her life, her move to Long Island in early middle school came as a drastic change and provided somewhat of a culture shock to her. As a young child who grew up surrounded by her family, Trudy's father moved to New York due to the increased work opportunities he found in the Northeast. She was convinced to relocate to Long Island upon being informed of the improved educational system in the area by his brother. Having been homeschooled for much of her life, she noted the racial and social pressures that can emerge in a mostly white neighborhood. She was later transferred from her predominantly white charter school in Miller Place to a more diverse regular public school in Valley Stream. Trudy then experienced some of the negative attitudes of classmates who would misjudge or classify her for her racial background. She nonetheless enjoys her new living environment and has bonded with and established a positive reputation among her peers. When not studying, she enjoys spending time with a group of nerdy, mostly male friends who enjoy a range of board games with her, including Dungeons and Dragons and Shadowrun. She was also shown to be very smart from a young age, as she appeared to be fluent in the French language at only three years old. Trudy is shown to be quick on her feet in situations, in addition to being a talented singer who was frequently found busking on the street. She wore her brown hair in three braids as a little girl, with a barrette at the end of each, and wore a yellow and purple short-sleeved dress, purple leggings, a green bracelet, and red ballet flats. 

She formerly aspired to be "the next Whitney Houston" and was lured into engaging with a local talent scout who had promised to make her a star, only to con her. She is usually understanding however and tends to be mature and responsible, causing her parents to trust her to make good decisions and look after her younger cousins and siblings. Despite being very strong-willed and environmentally-conscious, Trudy has a nerdy side, as seen in her preference for Lenovo products, and she has similarly watched the Oprah Winfrey show. She is part of a subreddit that is filled with just a few students from her school, during which she is often informed on the latest series to look out for while attending the group's meetings. She is a child of the modern era and finds secret satisfaction in viewing the YouTube channel of a vlogger who goes by Cottage Fairy. Her sleepwear consists of a blue nightshirt with a white collar and a pair of matching pants, and she has freckles and black hair styled into an Afro. Trudy has a penchant of wrenching her neck very badly once a year, whereas her older brother tends to get nauseous from shaky cameras. She once traded her father's leftover pasta salad for some jambalaya and likes to make smoothies, as she can be really creative when picking out ingredients to use. She does push-ups, which has made her relatively strong in her upper body, and she thinks fist bumps are "cooler" and less germy than high fives. She is an avid learner and is known around her school as a star student, and she even enjoys doing homework, to the point of feeling empty when she is not assigned any. Trudy is a brown-skinned girl who is shown to have thick, kinky-coily black hair, and it currently reaches her shoulders blades. 

While she is sometimes bossy and short-tempered and has a bit of a "take charge" attitude, she is friendly and sincere, and her heart is always in the right place. She has prominent deep-set dark brown eyes and wide lips, and she is often described by Naomi as having "the most beautiful smile." At approximately 5 ft 10 1/2 inches tall by the age of 16, she is often described as being statuesque due to her very tall height. Trudy uses mud to treat acne, poison ivy rashes and sunburns, in addition to buying a pair of suede boots and wanting to get her helix pierced. Although her dream school for her singing career is the Manhattan School of Music, she hopes to attend the Touro College of Pharmacy should she choose to go the medical route. Her main favorite genres of music are hip-hop, R&B, and funk, with one of her science experiments involving the comparison of music from the baroque period to today's music, and the other testing plants' responses to musical stimuli. She loves Bugattis and being stylish and can unintentionally come across as greedy, since she will do anything for fame and money. Sometimes, when things don't go her way, Trudy tries to make excuses to justify her actions in order to maintain the image she wants people to have of her. She has a fear of her family not needing her, implying she has a savior complex, and in stereotypical teenage talk, she almost always uses the word "literally" when describing something. She is always gracious when she is redirecting the behavior of others however, ultimately making her someone whom everyone else can look up to. 

She goes on a school trip to Manassas, Virginia and has her room decorated with Coca-Cola accents everywhere, including her wastebasket, lampshade, bedspread, and curtains. Trudy is close with her college-aged older brother Tyson, who is currently studying cell biology and in a committed relationship with a tall and beautiful girl named Sasha. She is very close-knit with her family and mentioned by her friends to have "family pride", as her household tends to prize unity. They celebrate Kwanzaa annually in order to honor their cultural roots, and as a means of bringing all of their loved ones together. She also attends the local Methodist church every Sunday morning at 11:00 am and is strongly connected to both sides of her family, cherishing every moment that she gets to spend with them during their reunions. Trudy claims that she has Nubian blood in her, as revealed when she first states that her ancestry actually goes as far back as the year 500 BC. She likewise made a catapult during her time in middle school and owns a a particular type of expensive perfume that she only chooses to wear if she is going on a date with Isaiah. When she was just 14 years old, she started reading Anna Karenina, although she would not come to finish the book for about 3 more years. She appears to favor hitting the dance floor at the coolest parties and chatting throughout the night with interesting new people. Trudy has tried lock picking before and is often impressed by business centers, and she tends to practice her catwalk while she is balancing books on top of her head. She decides to do an intern program and marries her best friend and childhood sweetheart Isaiah Sweeney in a Bora Bora destination wedding after she finally becomes a pharmacist.  INFJ 1w2