Intimate bodies at cuddle parties

This paper is based on ethnographic fieldwork, focusing on the processes and practices of cuddle parties. Data was collected from a combination of participant-observation, interviews, and diaries aimed to understand and interpret this unique form of intimate interaction. By disentangling bodily disciplines and dramaturgical (self-)presentations, this study explores how and to what extent cuddle party participants collectively trust and embody safe and non-sexual touch experiences in forms of “playful” interaction rituals. Alongside the chance for participants to explore bodies, with permission, this study concludes that cuddle parties are experiential playgrounds where both intimacy and affectionate touch, such as cuddling, are (re)created in the context of loosened normative, relational, and sexual constraints.