Thomas Kinkade Boston

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Why have we caught the hug bug? Mental-health professionals cite everything from increasing population density to community spirit among millennials. Some theories point to 9/11 bringing the country together and to The Sopranos showing that tough guys can hug too. More recently, the hit show Entourage prompted fans to "hugging" and making other kids late for class.
And let's not forget the increasing popularity of workplace hugs, which can be especially confusing, notes Susan Dunn, an executive coach in Dallas. "I have to say, 'O.K., there's a hug, and then there's a hug,'" she notes, the kind that can get HR involved. Nearly half the respondents in an October survey on the Business-networking site Greenlight Community copped to hugging co-workers. But with hug it out, bitch" (a tagline now immortalized on T shirts). "I'd always welcome a hug," says Aaron Schutte, a senior at Iowa's Wartburg college and founder of the 2,500-member Facebook group I Love a Good Hug. "Why not?"Of course, hugging has its haters. Schools in a handful of states have banned the gesture, with a middle-school principal in Oak Park, Ill., explaining back in 2007 that groups of students--typically girls--were jamming the hallways with "extreme