In a follow up to my earlier post about how my vacation with my daughter changed me (https://steemit.com/life/@lpfaust/how-my-vacation-with-my-4-year-old-daughter-helped-me-discover-what-i-was-missing), I find the universe has a strange sense of humor. As I was opening my Yahoo email account (I know, I know…who uses Yahoo anymore) to touch base with a friend who is a recruiter in my field, I see a curated post from Marie Claire out of the corner of my eye titled, “I Hired a Professional Cuddler” (https://www.yahoo.com/style/hired-professional-cuddler-154920479.html)
The stunned look on my face must have been awesome.
Then curiosity overtook me. It’s the kind of curiosity that overtakes me when I come across an episode of Ancient Aliens on the “History” channel while QVC is running a marathon on every other channel.
Professional cuddler is an occupation?
Apparently.
The cuddle movement dates back to just over 10 years ago courtesy of snuggle mixers sponsored by Cuddle Party. As a direct result of this, an entire industry of cuddle-for-hire grew up around this complete with licensed, professional cuddlers and one-on-one cuddle sessions.
How does one become a licensed cuddler?
For a $79 fee and 10 hours of training, an interested party could sign up at Cuddlist (http://cuddlist.com/) to become a licensed, professional cuddler. Then said party can advertise on a the cuddle version of LinkedIn (http://cuddleuptome.com/).
No seriously, People Pay for This?
Yes. According to an article in the New York Times, a professional cuddler can earn as much as $80 per hour for non-sexual cuddling and as much as $400 for an overnight cuddle session. Basically, in one session, you can pay back your licensing fee.
The full interview can be found at: http://www.nytimes.com/2016/06/19/fashion/professional-cuddling.html
Louis Thoreaux, Where Are You When I Need You?
One of my favorite, documentary producers, Louis Thoreaux of BBC news loved to create immersive documentaries about counter-culture groups. Unfortunately, he never did one on the cuddle culture. However, we do have some field study from R Todd Kelly who went to CuddleCon 2105 and wrote all about it (http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2015/02/23/i-went-to-a-cuddling-convention.html).
Nikki Glaser attended Cuddle Sanctuary for an episode of Not Safe and she described the the session as, "that's basically what would happen if an Enya song became a business."
The ROI alone has me thinking I need to find the $79 so I can start a counter culture series on Steemit.
Universe, thanks for the chuckle. Now get back to work.