Music and motivation Revolve Tour hits Gwinnett

You think football fans were the screamingest of all on Saturday? Whatever.

A 7,000-person crowd, mostly teen girls, took over Gwinnett Center in Duluth on Saturday for The Revolve Tour, a weekend event of music and motivation — and lots of screaming. The lineup included pop-gospel acts like Hawk Nelson, Natalie Grant, Group 1 Crew and Nicole C. Mullen. And the discussion? Faith. Plastic surgery. Guys. Sex. Weight. Self-esteem. Self-acceptance.

“I’ve never been around so many girls like me,” said Jocelyn Amaker, 17, of Columbus. “We all have something in common.”

And not just that they shriek whenever someone on stage mentions Facebook, or “The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants,” or really, pretty much anything. Jocelyn and her sisters bumped into some of the same people they go to high school with, but never talk to. That changed this weekend.

“I never thought about it — I just thought about what I was going through,” said Makayla Amaker, 14. “You don’t know everybody, what they’re going through. You can’t judge.”

Long lines stretched from merchandise booths selling books, CDs, T-shirts and posters and autograph tables stationed by the tour’s headliners. They lined up, too, to meet Austin Gutwein, a 14-year-old student from Arizona, who started a non-profit that helps children orphaned by HIV and AIDS. When he spoke, one voice bellowed “I’m in love with you!” Austin blushed and kept going — the Revolve Tour is hitting 16 cities; he’s used to the screaming, and the arena’s where men’s bathrooms have temporary signs up for ladies instead.

The audience was silent until he finished a short, you-can-do-it speech. Then his non-profit, Hoops of Hope, became the new buzzword on the floor, along with another organization, World Vision. Karen Mizell and her daughter, Karson Mizell, 13, of Griffin, signed up through World Vision to sponsor a 1-year-old Peruvian child named Camila. Karson says she’ll send the infant toys and her own weekly allowance. That, and the music, made for a wild girl’s weekend.

“Raw,” is how mom describes the weekend. “Pumped up,” daughter says, in a good, voice-losing way, with a mix of girls in heavy black eyeliner and girls barely old enough to color inside the lines.

If it were any different, “I would try to hide some of me,” Karson said. “Around girls, I can be myself.”