This is my alter-ego, Ruby. She’s a character I’m developing with my partner in crime, Carmen, to teach library skills.
Ruby is roly-poly. Magnificently endowed. Generously proportioned. She shops in the Woman’s Department. She’s well cushioned. Fat.
Ruby is one of five folks making up the community of a fictitious Michigan library called the Rosa Parks Public Library.
While developing this community, it was important to us that we had a genuinely diverse character set. That we didn’t give lip service to diversity by inserting a Black or LatinX person and calling it good.
We considered some of the characteristics we wanted to represent. I’m doing the narration for Ruby and I said that I’d like Ruby to be fat. Carmen was writing down the instructions to the animators.
“How would you like me to put that?” she asked.
“Let’s try ‘overweight.” I said.
When the first round of characters came back, Ruby had the same dimensions as the others: a skinny, near-stick-sized, shape.
Hmmm, I thought, and I responded with this:
Put Ruby in a long, purple skirt with a pink T-shirt, give her long hair, and please remember that:
Ruby is round. There is more of Ruby to Love. Make more of Ruby.
This is me.
How do you think the animators did?
Plum Librarian LLC 
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