I Made a Serious Vocational Error
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.
In Holland you can give someone the gift to do some "Cow hugging". And there is a company that massages their cows for better meat, which is of course more expensive.
In Japan everything is stranger: men hiring a fake family to spend a few hours with. Or you can hire a man to just listen to your story.
I guess as long as there is a need....
On the cow massages, do the workers have to get licensed? I would imagine they would since (I would guess) they would have to certify that meat from the cow was massaged.
Funny thing is after doing some follow up research, I discovered a number of other jobs which left me scratching my head. I may write a future article on that, but some are undercover bridesmaids, professional mourners, and dog surfing instructors. I echo your feelings, as long as there is a need and someone willing to pay...
lol there are PUA's. Pick Up Artists. That will train you to... pick up women. @neilstrauss who is now on steemit wrote a book called the game. That book talked about that lifestyle.
There's people that will pay for alot of things.
I remember reading his book one afternoon in a Barnes and Noble. One of the funnier sections was when they decided to go on a sleep diet, thinking they could gradually wean themselves off a 8 hour sleep need. Turns out they kept getting hit with micro naps in the middle of what they were doing, kind of like narcolepsy.
I'm not sure about a license, I guess the company has to get some kind of certificate. Is there a cow-physiotherapy/massage-course somewhere? ;-)
I knew allready of the professional mourners for a long time, because we had someone on TV that went to the US to do this to show it exists.
Pick-up artists (see below) don't give the best pick-up-line, they give advice about how to be more confident and happy with yourself. Which in the end is the best thing there is: love yourself first, so you can love others.
I never knew about professional mourners until I stumbled across an article on the internet. One of the best reporters on counter cultures is Luis Thoreaux on BBC. He had a weird weekends series, where he spent time as a professional wrestler, spent some time in the Westborough Baptist Church, participated in a Demolition Derby and so on. I wish he would revive that series and jump into some current counter cultures.