“pack in. pack out. and pack your heels hunni”: Ecodrag and Ecoqueer Instagram

Abstract

This article examines Instagram as ecomedia uniquely positioned to provide spaces for members of marginalized communities to find each other and to see themselves in the outdoors. This visibility is an essential step in forming virtual coalitions as well as providing visual representations of how to take up space in the outdoors as well as revising masculinist stereotypes that connect men with the domination and destruction of the nonhuman world. This article looks at the ecodrag of @pattiegonia, an environmental advocate drag queen, who uses Instagram as her main medium. Through her Instagram account and her outside advocacy, she dismantles the gender binary, performs an ecologically conscious drag, and challenges the oppressive narratives of “real” and “natural” manhood in ways that multiply the possibilities for new forms of ecomedia.