A wedgie is the act of forcibly pulling a person's underpants upwards from the back. The act is often performed as a school prank or a form of bullying.
Wedgies are commonly featured in popular works, either as a form of low comedy or as a behaviour representative of bullying. In such works, briefs are usually the type of underpants that are worn by the victim.[1][2]
A wedgie can also occur in artistic gymnastics, particularly females who wear leotards. Retired American gymnast Nastia Luikin said “You’re not allowed to [pick a wedgie] or else you get deducted. So a lot of people use like sticky spray [called TuffSkin] for your butt so your leotard doesn’t move. I’ve never used it and I know most of the girls don’t really use it, though we use it for our wrists before we put tape on underneath our grips because we’re sweaty and it’s a little extra stick. But if you have a fall and your leotard goes up your butt, you don’t want to fix it in the middle of your routine. Off to the side, it’s totally fine.”[3]
Dangers
Wedgies, especially when performed on males, can be dangerous, potentially causing testicular or scrotal damage. An incident in 2004 involving a ten-year-old boy required reattachment of a testicle to the scrotum.[4]
Variations
As a prank or form of bullying, there are a number of variants to the normal, or traditional wedgie. It is impractical to list every variant, as the names and processes can be rather subjective; however, there are a few better-known variants of the wedgie.
- The melvin is a variant where the victim's underpants are pulled up from the front, to cause injury, or, at least, severe pain to the victim's genitals.[5]
- The atomic wedgie entails hoisting the waistband of the receiver's underwear up and over their head.[5]
- The hanging wedgie is a variant in which the victim is hung by their underpants, elevated above the ground.[6]
- The ripping wedgie involves the tearing of the victim's underpants, sometimes ripping off a portion (such as the waistband) of them, or forcibly removing the garment entirely.[7]
See also
- List of practical joke topics
- Wedgies, a 2008 mini series-focused block on Cartoon Network
References
- ^ Wedgie. Archived 2007-11-18 at the Wayback Machine The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition. Houghton Mifflin Company, 2004. Retrieved 30 November 2007 via Dictionary.com.
- ^ No More Bullies, School Counselor Resources.
- ^ https://people.com/style/rio-olympics-2016-gymnastics-rules-nastia-liukin/
- ^ "Emergency operation after school prank". Yorkshire Post. 2004-12-02. Archived from the original on 2014-01-10. Retrieved 2021-03-15.
- ^ a b Curran, David (4 January 2007). "Gwyneth And 'The Atomic Wedgie' / The attempt to prove the actress wrong after she slams American dinner party chatter is beyond a disaster". SFGATE. Retrieved 7 July 2009.
- ^ Stuever, Hank (2 September 2002). "At School, a Most Uncomfortable Subject". The Washington Post. Archived from the original on 13 April 2010. Retrieved 7 July 2009.
- ^ Harper, Shaun R. (2010). College Men and Masculinities Theory, Research, and Implications for Practice. Wiley. p. 270. ISBN 9780470448427.
External links
- Media related to Wedgies at Wikimedia Commons
