In the frenzy of midday rush hour, my colleague Will and I are creating quite
a diversion. We are trying to hug strangers by Bank Tube station in
Central London. “Free hug, sir? They’re very good. Come on, you know you
want to. Hey, where are you going?” We are not barmy. Nor are we the first
to subject ourselves to this bizarre form of public humiliation. In 2004,
a young Australian named Juan Mann stationed himself in a bustling
shopping mall in Sydney. Over his head, he held a cardboard sign saying
“Free Hugs” in big, black letters. He waited.
After initial misgivings, curious passers-by were persuaded that Juan was not
a thief, a sexual offender or clinically insane. They began to hug him. He
returned to the same spot, once a week for the next two years, to hand
out hugs.
When authorities tried to stop it, Mann got together a petition with 10,000
signatures and his friend, Shimon Moore, stuck the story on YouTube as a
four-minute film, set to a song by Moore’s band, the Sick Puppies.
Within days it became the twelfth most viewed video on the site, and the
authorities backed off. The band got a record deal. Juan Mann got
something even better — an interview on Oprah Winfrey’s show.
And so the Free Hugs Campaign was born. Almost nine million people have now
seen Mann’s video, and many have made their own. One man (Juan Mann, that
is — get it?) became many, and hugging events sprang up all over the
world, in Japan, Korea, Taiwan and America, Italy, Spain and Belgium. In
Sydney, a Free Hugs Day was declared on Labour Day. In China, free huggers
were banned. Hugging mania has crept into Britain from time to time, but
never en masse. A recent study by the Social Issues Research Centre
revealed that fewer than 5 per cent of Britons think that they are good at
showing positive emotion. Would such a crude display of sentiment be
welcome in the land of the stiff upper lip, I wondered. The raucous
laughter that fell upon my proposition in the office that we help
Londoners to “spread the love” suggested not.
Still, here we are, Will and I, standing on a London corner with two “free
hugs” signs of our own, a couple of photographers and more than one
suspicious stare.
We have decided to proffer our hugs where we think they might be most needed —
the Square Mile. Here, we are sure, stressed lawyers and investment
bankers will emerge exhausted from their busy offices to find much-needed
comfort in our embrace. It will all be very Amélie-esque.
Hardly. “Come on, darlin’,” grunts Gareth, a gruff 40-year-old shopkeeper from
Lewisham, enveloping me in a bear hug and shaking me vigorously from side
to side. His mate cocks his head to one side. “Anything more than a hug?
I’d stick around if there were more.” Smiling sweetly, I extricate myself.
“Afraid not,” I say. A young man walks past. “Free sex?” He looks over
hopefully. I shake my head. He carries on walking.
Two Australian girls shriek with recognition. “We saw this in Italy,” one
yells as she flings her arms around me. “It’s a fantastic idea!” Soon,
plenty of passers-by are stopping. What is this for, lots ask. Just being
friendly, I reply cheerfully, which satisfies most. A man called Darren
rings his girlfriend to come and join us and we hug, all three of us,
before the pair wander off happily, hand in hand. A driver, Joe, jumps out
of his van in the middle of the road, scampers across the street for a
tight squeeze and runs back to beeping traffic. One anonymous punter runs
up, twirls me around a few times and then hurries off again without a
word.
Some seem embarrassed. Of what, I ask a blushing thirtysomething policeman.
“I’m just not that into hugging,” he explains. “It makes me
uncomfortable.” “My wife’d kill me,” is a common response, although it
doesn’t quite ring true. Especially when the middle-aged men use it to
fend off Will.
Berta from Venezuela, who gives me a hug and a kiss on the cheek after she
establishes (correctly) that I am not giving away free drugs, asserts that
this kind of coldness is typical of the English.
“But the newer generations are friendlier. Soon they will be like the
foreigners.” An immaculately turned-out 25-year-old tourist from Paris
called Marie disagrees: “Zis is very English, non? We do not have zis in
France.” She refuses to take a hug back to her country from me, and struts
off.
The people who do hug divide into two categories. First, those who act as if
they do this every day. Take, for example, the young man who envelops me
in a protracted clinch, borrows my sign and calls it a day only when he is
accosted by an overly eager old man. Then there are those who seem
desperately in need but afraid to ask.
Countless rejections — by bankers, tourists, gay couples and even small
children — leave you savvy. You begin to recognise the convertible ones,
the shy but curious faces that skulk a few yards away, behind the cameras.
A traffic warden turns away from the photographer. I ask him if there is
a security issue. “No, no I’m just shy,” he says, but then accepts
gratefully when I throw myself at him.
Some children we meet on the Tube, Chris, 5, and Steve, 6, have to be coaxed
into a hug, but when they are, they are wholehearted. Their mother,
Brenda, is fleeing domestic violence. Her boys crave affection, she says,
even if it does come from strangers on a train.
The busy-looking suits tend to hurry past. Finally, one exhausted (and
slightly inebriated) banker called Mark stops. He takes some persuasion,
but when he concedes, sighs wearily: “God, I needed that, haven’t had a
hug in yonks.” At the end of the afternoon, I must have hugged about 70
people, most of whom I’ve had to approach myself, and been rejected by
more. Will and I are exhausted.
But the hugging high stays with me all weekend. I feel kindly disposed towards
fellow commuters. I almost crush friends and recent acquaintances with
hugs. I have to restrain myself from hugging strangers, having learnt from
bitter experience that if you proposition people without the “free hugs”
sign, they assume that you are mad.
()
As we are finishing up by that corporate citadel, the Gherkin, a smart,
moustached gentleman draws near. On seeing our sign, he looks horrified.
“That’s just not British,” he declares before stomping off.
To him I say: take note. It soon might be. And to all the people who said
“Erm, I’ll come back later”, be warned. I might just be there if you do.
FRANCESCA STEELE
‘I hug a mass of teenagers, and their teacher’
Even on a Friday at lunchtime, the Square Mile is a difficult place to give
out hugs. It is what analysts might call a challenging environment. The
worst place of all is the pavement on the corner of Threadneedle Street
and Princes Street. There is no room there for any sort of human
affection, even if it comes free. “Get in their faces!” shouts Chris
Harris, distinguished photographer of The Times. “Be a bit more
aggressive.” I am starting to feel as if he is my pimp.
“Not today, thank you,” say countless men in suits. Some say: “You are not
attractive enough.” At least two say: “Who’s going to do the hugging?” and
then look around hopefully. “I am,” I say, and they say: “Not today,
thank you.” The women who pass smile and shake their heads. Some regard
me quite frankly as a lunatic.
“You won’t have any luck here,” says Daniel White, 19, a security guard at the
Royal Exchange. “People won’t even tell you the time. They
are all too busy.” After a little persuasion, however, he agrees to be
hugged. “I’d rather hug that girl that’s giving them out, though,” he
says, looking across the thoroughfare to where Francesca is seeing to yet
another happy customer.
“Look, I’m not hugging you,” says an Evening Standard
saleswoman in her late fifties. “No way. I don’t care who you work for.
You aren’t having a hug.” What if I tried to give you one, I say,
thinking she might be playing hard to get. “I would knock you out,” she
says. “You might have all sorts of diseases. You might be a pickpocket. I
don’t know you. Go away.”
In the end it is the foreigners who are first to bite. A wine merchant called
Pierre agrees almost immediately. Afterwards, flushed with success, I ask
him why he wanted one. “I’m Italian,” he says. “I would have preferred a
girl. But I don’t mind. I like a hug.”
A group of Spanish teenagers on a school trip ask what I am doing. I give one
of them a hug, and suddenly they all want one. A sort of mob mentality
sets in, and clinging to my sign amid a heaving mass of teenagers, I
wonder if I will die. Or be arrested.
When their teacher arrives I hug him too, and the teenagers cheer, after which
for about half an hour they become my unofficial supporters club,
following me at ten paces and cheering whenever anyone agrees to a hug.
With them behind me I am unstoppable. I hug an architect who believes that
“there is too much space between people”, and a shop fitter who says he
physically requires three hugs a day. I even scale a scaffold to hug a
painter and decorator.
“I think there ought to be more hugging in this country,” says Isabelle, 50,
an IT manager. “I’ve had a good day today, but life in general is
stressful.”
“Are you really giving them away for free?” says Lynn Cufley, in her forties
and working in insurance. “How marvellous. I thought you had to be selling
something.”
It is a strange feeling, when the woman you have just passed on the pavement
calls out, asking for a hug. It could go to your head: is it because I am
carrying the sign, not because I am irresistible? Then yet another
beautiful young investment banker requires my services. My pimp, Mr
Harris, reckons I am a lucky blighter.
A surprising number of men also want a hug. Some have to be persuaded that
they do, others seem to like the physical contact, so long as they can
pretend that we don’t really mean it.
British office culture can be hard for men who need hugs. Andy, 45, an
insurance manager, would like a hug, but won’t give me his second name
because he thinks it could be interpreted as neediness, causing “general
hilarity” among his colleagues and clients.
“It isn’t that commodity brokers don’t hug each other,” says Joanna, 34. “They
aren’t too bad if they’ve had a few.” A tall and rather buff young fellow
called Peter hugs me and says: “I’ll be in the Telegraph pub. You can buy
me a drink if you like.”
Of all the hugs that day, the best was with a newspaper vendor called Mary,
who is 53. “Do you know?” she says, “I haven’t had a hug from a fella in
seven years. Not since my John died.” After that, it all seemed
worthwhile.
WILL PAVIA
How to give good hug
Always tailor your hug to the individual. You will find that you have an
automatic preference for putting your arms around the recipient’s waist or
shoulders. But if the person is much taller than you, go for the waist,
so they don’t have to stoop.
Most people move their heads naturally to the left but try to anticipate the
movement of the other person and go in confidently but slowly — you don’t
want to bang heads. Like a handshake, your grip should be firm but not
suffocating. If the hugger is reluctant or overeager, don’t linger more
than a few seconds. Most important of all, always arrive and leave with a
smile. That will stay with them long after the hug is over.
The language of hugging
Dr Ceri Parssons is a senior lecturer in psychology at Staffordshire
University
Physical contact is a language. On a very basic level, touching illustrates
that you like someone; equally, if someone won’t touch you they probably
don’t like you that much.
The hug acts as a physical support that is indicative of the emotional support
you are offering. Rejecting spatial intimacy probably stems from a
primitive defence mechanism — literally keeping people at arm’s length.
In terms of non-verbal communication, British people tend to desire a much
bigger area of distance than others. In a recent study, body language
experts filmed two men — one from the East and one from the West — having
a conversation. Afterwards they sped it up and saw that every time the
Eastern man took a step forward, the other took a step back. So
effectively the Western man was being chased around the room as he tried
to create distance.
Western culture is largely at fault. These days, we have become increasingly
isolated. We live far apart from our families, we move around much more
frequently. So we are still in need of the physical and emotional support
in a hug but we are less accustomed to it.
But the success of the free hugs campaign shows clearly that many people still
want to hug, and in some ways it is more acceptable, if less visible,
than it was before. The young are more used to it. They write hugs and
kisses into their text messages as noughts and crosses, developing a
visibility of hugging.
Television has also allowed American culture, which is more gushy, to affect
our own. We are encouraged, Oprah-style, to let out our feelings.
Male-to-male hugging has also become more acceptable because of the
shake-up of gender roles. Role models such as David Beckham have made it
OK for men to express their feminine side.
Just because you are offering support and someone is taking it does not mean
there has to be an imbalance — there can be an equal partnership expressed
in this way. If someone does give very aggressive hugs, their support is
probably qualified by a need to control, and similarly, a weak hugger may
want to be controlled.
The forced intimacy of frequent hugs or group hugs can indicate an insecurity
and need visibly to keep people on side.
