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Media Credit: Angeli Bueno Baltimore's LadyFest featured a documentary about body hair, a discussion about menstrual protection and several workshops.

This weekend, women and female-identified alike congregated to embrace their souls and bodies at the first ever LadyFest Baltimore. Originating eight years ago, LadyFest was created by a few female activists involved in the Riot Girl and Do It Yourself (DIY) movements who wanted an event that would celebrate women and female culture.

Since 2000 with the first LadyFest in Olympia, Wash., a multitude of states and countries have hosted their own. 2008 will see LadyFests in Bordeaux, London, Toronto, Switzerland, Buenos Aires, New Zealand and other locales.

In the beginning of 2007, Baltimore saw its own LadyFest stirrings with the efforts of four radical women who began holding meetings to discuss feminine issues with the ultimate goal of planning a LadyFest.

Xander Dumas, one member of the planning committee, joined in May 2007 when the group was rolling into high gear with over 25 participants, brainstorming ideas and coming up with new ways to invigorate the Baltimore feminist community.

Over the past year, there have been numerous fundraisers for LadyFest Baltimore which have helped pay for all of the components and also served as advertising for the main event. Any additional, unused funds went to Power Inside, a nonprofit organization working to help rebuild the lives of women impacted by incarceration, street life and abuse.

The planning committee quickly decided that while the first LadyFest focused mostly on female musicians, the Baltimore edition should have a heavy focus on workshops and learning experiences.

"There are a lot of great women with really interesting things to say and to teach, and some of them are radical in mainstream society terms ... We wanted to make it more available to anyone who wanted to learn about alternatives to mainstream culture," Dumas said.

Alternative is definitely the right word for the trend in eclectic workshops offered by LadyFest. Housed mostly in St. John's Church, also known as 2640 (St. Paul Street), workshops from Saturday morning until Sunday night ranged from raw food cooking lessons, to discussions on feminist race relations, to breast casting, knitting lessons and interpretive poetry readings.

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