Feminism and the Scaly Llama

Scaly Llama

The concept of the scaly llama can be seen in real life quite frequently. The scaly llama idea is that people often see others according to their expectations of those people, expectations that are typically born of stereotypes. The concept when written by Hurley (2013) was applied to fictional characters, but it does apply to real life as well. For example, people who work in retail will be well familiar with the reality that people often see them as roles, rather than people. Many interactions between people are characterized by the scaly llama effect -- a server sees a table; the customers see a servant, neither side actually concerning itself with the realities of who those people are. Hurley (2013) argues that the scaly llama is lazy, and this is true both for writers and for people in their daily lives. When the server and the customers fail to recognize each other outside of their prescribed roles, this is a matter of shorthand, of simplifying the world in a way that makes the interaction easy to process.

The scaly llama effect is seen with women frequently. It may even start with one's own mother, who is seen in the mother role primarily. It is not until later in life that one starts to view one's own mother as a more complex and nuanced person, an adult of equal status. People might know a lot about their mother, but the relationship is characterized in a certain way, until adulthood when you suddenly realize that your mother went through all the same things when she was younger that you did, and that you will go through all the same things when you get older that she has. This changes the bond, restructures the relationship and eliminates the scaly llama effect.

In the workplace, the scaly llama effect is seen frequently. Certain people are seen, based on a number of factors, in certain ways. If you fit the archetype of someone who is usually promoted, you will be seen more as having that potential. Women, unfortunately, have to do a lot more to be seen as having promotion potential. There is a view, and I have seen this many times, that women are perfectly happy to perform lower-level roles. This means that regardless of qualifications, they are not given the same opportunities. Women end up in roles lower than they otherwise might as a result. That sort of sexism manifests even to this day in the laws, where the lack of maternity leave is a matter of statute (or lack thereof), because those who write the laws, mostly men, have deemed that women should raise their children, yes, but that this should be a priority. The ability to take time off without consequence is not given, because the expectation is that with children comes the end of a woman's career ambitions. This view is classic -- to view women mainly as mothers -- and that this remains embedded into the legal and social structure of the land is to locked in the scaly llama, and make the fiction a reality. That is the essence of the scaly llama, that it is really something that does not exist, but if you think hard enough that it does exist, it will. Laws that position women as mothers only, or actions that provide fewer opportunities for advancement in the workplace, are taking a fiction and imposing it on the population.