NICOLE CHIN | layout & design editor

Embrace the hug.

I used to hate hugs.

I am the first to admit any sort of physical contact used to bother me.

In high school, I was the shy kid who stood in the corner of a room, arms crossed, head down, trying to hide away from any social interactions.

Freshman year, I was the lame one-armed hugger. When I first came to APU and realized people enjoyed hugging, I retreated farther into my imaginary shell.

I didn’t like the physical intimacy it created with another person and I didn’t like the way it opened up your body for people to feel and touch. I felt physically vulnerable, unveiling any insecurities I had about the way I looked and the way I felt.

Yet I continued to discover that every time I became emotionally closer to someone, I would want to hug them at some point through our time together. It never really made sense to me.

This week is National Eating Disorder week, but maybe we should focus less on eating disorders and more just on loving our bodies and each other’s bodies. One way to really begin to accomplish that is by embracing the hug.

It wasn’t until this year that I really realized the reason why we hug each other.

Hugs are essential. They help us accept each other. They invite us into each other’s lives. They allow us to love each other.

Through hugs, we are sending nonverbal signals to people that we are physically accepting them and the space their body occupies. We love their bodies—skinny or not, curvy or not, toned or not—we love them for what they are. We value each other no matter what we look like, feel like, or seem like. We accept each other.

In 2004, Juan Mann started the Free Hugs Campaign. His mission was to “reach out and hug strangers to brighten up their lives.”

He conceived this idea when he returned to Australia from an extended stay in London and found no one had come to welcome him home at the airport. He then made the sign “Free Hugs” and stood out in Sydney’s busiest intersection and passed out free hugs to anyone who would accept.

Since then, the Free Hugs Campaign has spread all over the world—in Japan, Korea, Taiwan, America, Italy, Spain and Belgium.

The campaign has sparked a worldwide change and a fresh perspective for a world so digitally consumed. Face it, we can’t hug our iPods, we can’t cry in text messages and we can’t have an one-on-one on AIM.

People have begun to understand hugs and physical contact are necessary for everyone’s sanity—and for everyone’s heart.

We need hugs. We need people. We need love.

In the past, I felt bad about myself, despising my body and treating it poorly. And the only thing that really ever made me feel better was the hug of someone who cares.