A behind the scenes look at the atomic wedgie community

Stretched out — Benjamin Fredrickson’s new project and photobook ‘Wedgies’ queers a time-old bullying act by exploring its erotic, extreme potential.

In the Chelsea area of Manhattan, New York, there used to be a gay sex shop called The Blue Store. Open 24 hours a day, lining its shelves was lube, enemas, outfits and porn films, but what it was most famous for laid at the back of the shop, a space with video booths and peep shows where gay men would go to cruise.

One day when it before it shut in 2024, photographer Benjamin Fredrickson had arranged to meet up with a model. He was shooting for his series Wedgies, where his subjects give themselves “atomic wedgies”, stretching underwear to near breaking point, and he was lining up his shot.

“I was like: ‘Okay, you go in this booth, I’ll go into the adjacent one and shoot through my gloryhole – you’ll be in a wedgie and lit by the light from the video booth,’” he recalls. “And then just as we were shooting, a stranger reached around and grabbed his butt. It was like the shot – I felt like Henri Cartier-Bresson.”

That photograph is now featured in his new photobook and accompanying exhibition for Fredrickson’s Wedgies series, which launched at the end of 2024. Inside, an array of muscular, toned men are photographed bent forwards, cheeks are pulled outwards and upwards by wedgies of clenching magnitude, often pulled over the subjects’ heads, or even suspending their full body weights from singular points. One sees a man suspended by his underwear from a doorframe, while other shots see different men give wedgies to the models.

The project was sparked at the end of 2019, when Fredrickson was in his Brooklyn studio space with a model. They were trying out different outfits and underwear, when suddenly, the shot Fredrickson was after came into focus. “He gave himself a wedgie,” he says. “And I was like: ‘Oh my god, this is it. This is what I want.’ Just the stretching, the movement – it felt very dancer like.”

After he began posting his pictures – shot entirely on film – on social media, he soon found himself immersed in the online wedgie community, as well as finding encouragement and support from beyond the kink spheres. “The wedgie community really embraced me and welcomed me with open arms,” he says. “That’s how I found the perfect underwear to use for my atomics, and then as it gained popularity I connected with fashion people, and people all over.”

The photographs are playful and eyebrow raising, but also horny and erotic. And in turning an act that many people and gay men have childhood memories of – particularly being on the side of the recipients’ – they also subvert the relatable.

“People have their experiences growing up, maybe their brother gave them wedgies, or they see Scary Movie 3 with Pamela Anderson, and she’s doing the wedgie pull,” he says. “And it’s a diverse community, some people are into the dom-sub relationship of bullying.”

Yet despite their humour and connotations, most of all, the pictures are a way for Fredrickson to express his sexuality via art and photography. “From my perspective as a queer man – I love butts,” he says. “It’s my love letter to butts, with atomic wedgies that go over a person’s head, it creates this beautiful shape, with the arch of the back, and I love its relationship with how our bodies contort with the fabric.”