FemFest provides female artists with a platform to shine

The Student Assembly for Gender Empowerment hosted its sixth annual female-led festival, FemFest, on Sunday, featuring vendors, live painting, craft-making and live music.

Several hundred people attended this year’s festival which featured different feminist vendors. Allegra Rosenberg, the director of FemFest, said that FemFest is important because it gives female artists a platform.

“It wouldn’t be as important if Concerts [Committee] and other USC committees had more equitable booking practices, but they don’t,” Rosenberg said. “So FemFest continues to exist just to give those acts a chance to be spotlighted.”

Rosenberg organized the festival along with a committee of eight other women.

Carly Sabicer, FemFest’s production manager, said that as a woman, she would not have had the chance to help organize a festival if it weren’t for FemFest.

“There are more women in the industry, but it still is very much run by men as far as audio engineers, producers and all that stuff,” Sabicer said. “I think it’s a great experience for women and non-binary individuals to get hands-on experience.”

Rachel Davis, a featured artist from Azusa Pacific University, did a live painting during the festival. Her piece was centered around female empowerment.

“The piece I’m doing is centered around the phrase ‘empowered women empower women,’” Davis said. “I think it’s really important and really beautiful to have women supporting each other and each other’s artistic endeavors and to celebrate our femininity and all that that means.”

The vendors at the festival included Planned Parenthood, Bloom Boutique and a company focused on empowering girls to pursue audio production called SoundGirls, among others.

Bloom Boutique is a student organization that accepts donated clothes, curates them and resells them to students at an affordable price with no item costing more than $20. CeCe Uhrich, a junior majoring in environmental science, runs the organization’s website and creates editorial content.

Uhrich noted the fashion industry is one of the rare industries that features female voices, but the money still mostly goes to male designers.

“I think the fact that we’re an all-female organization reflects the direction the fashion industry should be heading,” Uhrich said.

Some female artists are empowered by the fact that their industry is male-dominated. Christine Meisenhelter, a junior in the pop music program and the bassist of MOTHER, one of the bands playing at the festival, is one such artist.

“It kind of sucks but it’s also super empowering to have a male-dominated industry,” Meisenhelter said. “You realize when you get past the fact that you are the minority you also have the power. It gives you the power to get on stage and kick ass and show what you can do.”

Another artist, singer-songwriter Gavin Turek, performed second to last at the festival, effectively working the crowd and telling them to stop “fighting the urge to dance.” The audience danced through Turek’s entire set with Turek even joining them on the grass at different moments. Uhrich was impressed by Turek’s performance.

“She radiates girl power,” Uhrich said. “I was so proud to be a woman watching her perform, thinking, ‘This is what it means to be a female.’”

Indie dream pop artist Jay Som headlined the event and closed out the night with a mellow performance of her best-known songs, including “I Think You’re Alright” and “The Bus Song.”

Joey Krieger, a junior majoring in mechanical engineering, has been attending FemFest for four years. He credits the festival with drawing his attention to the inequality women and girls face in the music industry.

“I’ve been to entire shows where everyone playing was a man and to recognize how rare it is to see the opposite makes you realize that something’s off,” Krieger said.

Leila Kashfi, a sophomore majoring in business administration and music industry, said FemFest can encourage attendees to think about the issues women face.

“Hopefully at some point it’s just normalized so that we can all be empowered in this space to the point where there’s no space needed,” Kashfi said. “Even people who might just be coming for an artist or something then are forced to think about the things we’re talking about in this space and that we’re making a point to acknowledge that they wouldn’t have.”