Lookadoos and Don'ts

High school girls, R U ready 2 B dateable? Like, really dateable? Then it's time to shut up and "accept your girly-ness." Put on a bonnet and head on down to the cafetorium. Prom season is just around the corner.

That message comes courtesy of Justin Lookadoo, a Christian motivational speaker currently making the rounds of Texas schools. Sporting a look(ado) that crosses Guy Fieri with the Play-Doh Mop Top Hair Shop, Justin caused quite a stir yesterday when he spoke before an assembly at Dallas-area Richardson High School. Apparently his gender essential message just didn't resonate with the city slicker crowd. Must have been too many raging hormones.

Or it could be the list of "dateable rules" posted on his Trapper Keeper-esque website. Lookadoo is part of an evangelical Christian movement to make oppressive religion seem more rad, the kind of guy who sits backwards on a chair to prove how "with it" he is. He used to run a bodacious summer camp where speakers from now-defunct ex-gay group Exodus International would try to erase the rainbow. No wonder the Richardson kids were so moved. Who wouldn't want to hear dogma disguised in 90's self-help platitudes? Especially when the message is tailored to teens just like them.

Some highlights for girls:

• Accept your girly-ness. You’re a girl. Be proud of all that means. You are soft, you are gentle, you are a woman. Don’t try to be a guy. Guys like you because you are different from them. So let your girly-ness soar.

• Be mysterious. Dateable girls know how to shut up. They don’t monopolize the conversation. They don’t tell everyone everything about themselves. They save some for later. They listen more than they gab.

•Let him lead. God made guys as leaders. Dateable girls get that and let him do guy things, get a door, open a ketchup bottle. They relax and let guys be guys. Which means they don’t ask him out!!!

Guys, on the other hand, don't really need any rules. They are, after all, too busy growling in forests to read arbitrary lists. Nonetheless, Lookadoo has some lookadoozies for them too.

• Being a guy is good. Dateable guys know they aren’t as sensitive as girls and that’s okay. They know they are stronger, more dangerous, and more adventurous and that’s okay. Dateable guys are real men who aren’t afraid to be guys.

•Don’t just want a win, want an adventure. Dateable guys know life is about danger. You might not win, but that’s not the point, doing it is. Dateable guys risk failure to live the adventure of life.

•Men of God are wild, not domesticated. Dateable guys aren’t tamed. They don’t live by the rules of the opposite sex. They fight battles, conquer lands, and stand up for the oppressed.

Deep.

Lookadoo is apparently quite a popular speaker at Texas high schools. His website quotes Tyler ISD Principal Becky Clapp saying that he can come back to her school at any time. After the student and parent uproar yesterday, Richardson ISD was prompted to issue a formal apology, but he is still booked through next year at districts all over the state. After the Richardson kerfuffle, those bookings are likely to raise the howls of parents who think they would be better at raising young men and women than a sentient prickly pear. Poor Lookadoo. Those eternal words still remain true; "parents just don't understand."