Have you noticed that in the real world and popular media that often women are singers and men are musicians?

I've been watching Glee lately, and all of the back-up musicians in all of the sequences are men. Obviously, men also sing, but there are literally no women who play in any of the bands.

This is not unusual, onscreen or off.

Women are only allowed to play certain instruments. I remember when we had to chose instruments in the fifth grade, and all of the girls chose to play either the clarinet or the flute. Boys chose to play the drums, the trumpet or the saxophone. Girls were also allowed to learn the piano. I think the argument against other instruments that they were heavier, thereby more masculine. Really, though, is it that much easier for a dude to lug a bass around than for a woman to do it? That thing is heavy for whomever.

Perhaps that's one of the reason that it's so unusual for women to be seen playing anything else.

In classical music, women do make up quite a large percentage of strings players, aside from the bass, of course. This kind of size-ist attitude towards large instruments starts in elementary school, and there's very little opportunity to become a professional musician if you don't start that early. Female soloist violinists are not on an equal playing field with male soloists. Male soloists are judged for their talent, but female soloists are judged for their beauty and sex appeal, as well as their virtuosity. Female soloists often wear sexy, red dresses, and often pose to sell sex, and not classical music, on their album covers.

In popular music, female musicians are judged only within the sphere of other female musicians, and are almost always noted as such. Sure, women are allowed to wield an acoustic guitar and sing folksy songs about love lost. But if they get a band of women together, or have a mixed-gender group, every review will without fail note that there's is indeed a person with breasts holding that bass. It's almost like female musicians are a novelty in this arena, like a cow that has learned to tap dance. Even if women are as good as the boys (case in point: Wild Flag), they are always, always compared only with the girl groups that came before them, implying, of course, that they are good for girls, and not just good.

What do you think about the stereotype that women can't be musicians?