According to this article, a woman is making a living by selling cuddles.  She invites people to her home to snuggle while taking a nap with her, and she sometimes even reads them stories!  Although sex is not part of the package, and there is no touching of the private parts, people criticize her saying what she is doing is prostitution and monetizing love.  Yet despite the naysayers, she is so successful that she has hired an apprentice who is not yet trained enough to cuddle on her own, but has participated in many double cuddles as she learns the proper technique.

Okayyyyyyy.  So there is a lot here.

For one, this is testament to how meaningful touch is and demonstrates the primal need for intimacy that we all have.  There are countless studies of how baby animals without enough physical contact and affection often die even if they have plenty of food and water.  I am not sure who these sociopaths are that are conducting this research, but the conclusion extends to humans as well.  Tenderness is just as relevant to our survival as basic sustenance.

It is also highlighting the obvious tragedy of our modern lives of just how lonely and isolated we can all feel.  The main clients in search for these cuddles are often between relationships, in problematic relationships, or veterans of war.  It is not like they are feral humans who were raised by wolves.  Because wolves are very affectionate when they are not biting your face.  Even when we are around people, the feeling of loneliness can prevail.  Solitude isn’t a state of being, but a state of mind.  An existential awareness that no matter who you are around, no one can every truly understand you.  We are all alone wandering through our thoughts like lost babes in the woods.  (Ummm… do sexy ladies have a bad sense of direction or something?)

So what is it that these people get by being in the arms of this professional cuddler?  It seems to me that what this woman is doing with her cuddling business is re-enacting the nostalgic feeling of comfort that we felt as children being mothered.  Her clients are both women and men, and all assert there is nothing sexual about their experience.  The sensation of being held in a non sexual way mostly did happen in the arms of our mommies.  I for one don’t have a lot of memories being with men who just wanted to hug me, and not also have my vagina hug their penis. As we get older it is rare to have that pure sensation of security where there is no other agenda on the table.  So perhaps being held by this woman is like being enveloped by the embodiment of the idea of The Mother.

I think of how much The Munch wants to be touched.  It can be overwhelming the days she wants to sit on my lap while she eats, while we read, and while I poop.  Sometimes she wants me to carry her from room to room, or plays a game where she crawls on top of me, then gets off, then crawls on me again, and then slides off, and this repeats until I almost lose my mind.  It is rare that she is still enough for us to have an extended cuddle moment because she is a toddler and in a constant state of motion.  Kind of like an electron on speed.  But even though The Munch’s style of cuddle is intense, these moments of contact are priceless.