- Take one.
(clapperboard slamming)
(laughing)
Okay, can I make it more me?
Hi, my name is Wyn.
I was born in and raised in Nebraska,
and my life changed forever,
when I put on a pair
of high heel boots and backpacked
for the first time as Pattie Gonia.
(camera shutter sounding)
Pattie Gonia is an environmental
advocate drag queen.
And if you're wondering
what that is, I am too.
(chuckling)
This whole world is new
to me, if you can't tell.
This is a disaster.
Thankfully though, I am not strutting
these trails alone.
You're making such a huge difference,
and I think that it's just so cool
that you're an ally to kids in your school
and that you guys are an ally
every day of your life.
- Work, work, work.
- This show is about how
we can all learn to love
ourselves more, and love
on queen Mother Natch.
I'm here to show you the whole
entire process behind the scenes,
about any single issue
that I'm encountering.
I wanna show you what
I'm learning as a human,
and life outside of heels.
And then just show you
what my world can look
like through the art form,
and through my superpower of drag.
I'm taking every piece of what we learn,
and forming it into one piece of art
to hopefully make an impact.
So here we go queens.
Scene 101, take six.
(clapperboard slamming)
Action!
(waves crashing)
(whooping)
Oh my.
- Keep going.
(rustling)
- Mother Nature's hella pissed.
(cheerful twinkling music)
Hi!
- Hi, Wyn!
- I love you.
- How are you?
- So good, how are you?
One of the biggest
things that I've learned
this past year is how
crappy we are as humans
towards Mother Nature.
I honestly just never
thought about plastic.
I would use it once, throw it away.
Out of sight, out of mind.
I didn't care where it
ended up, where it went,
who took care of it.
I just thought that it was away.
- It's still coming in.
The shores continuously get
slammed by microplastics
and by ghost nets.
- Liz lives in Hawaii.
She's been sharing with me
what's really happening on the beaches,
and she challenged me to come
and see this problem firsthand.
And so we packed our
bags and flew to Hawaii.
I'm on my way to Hawaii, to make a film
about the plastics crisis,
and I had to get this.
So now this is the fork I'm gonna use
for the next two weeks
of my life in Hawaii.
Isn't she cute?
The way we as humans use plastic,
there is no way of avoiding it.
Like it is a problem.
So that's why we're here in Hawaii.
I think when most people think of Hawaii,
they think of this tropical paradise.
I think they think of
it as pristine and clean
and perfect and the epitome of beautiful.
And it is.
And it's also covered in plastic.
I'm so excited!
This whole entire journey started, yes,
when I started caring more about single
use plastic in my life,
but it also really started when I met
my friend Liz.
It's like my first date,
but, you know, with a woman,
my mother's dream.
She is the doors that
opened up this world to me.
- Wyn?
- Hi!
Hi.
- (chuckling) Hey.
- How are you?
- Are you real?
Welcome to Hawaii.
- Thanks, I feel so sweaty.
- Yeah, I know.
(laughing)
Tropical humidity, it's nuts.
You're gonna see it,
I'm stoked on the ocean.
It's also where I was devastated.
Like, marine debris is everywhere.
So, I know you just got off the plane,
but if you still have it in you,
let's go catch the sunset
at my favorite beach.
- Yeah.
Let's go do it.
- (chuckling) Yes.
- Queer rainbow explosion.
(whooping)
- Look at the moon, and the waves,
and the sand.
- This is beautiful!
- Yes!
Unreal.
- Wait, are you freaking kidding?
- Yeah, so, beautiful, paradise,
boom, boom, boom.
- It's literally right here.
- You look down.
- Literally.
- Right at your toes, and
what do you find, dude?
What is this?
- This is literally all plastic.
- I know.
- This is crazy.
- It's nuts.
Some of this stuff--
- What even is this?
- Is so brittle, too.
And it's just the sun,
the wind, the water,
all of the elements,
until it's just like--
- It's so tiny.
- Just degrades.
- Like look at this.
- I know.
- This is unreal.
Unreal, it's millions of pieces.
- Completely, and it goes
on for miles and miles.
It's so important to see this.
We have a problem with plastic.
- The whole entire beach for miles,
as far as I could see.
It is a line we are writing as humans,
literally in the sand that we don't care.
It's so crazy to me.
I used to spend so much time outdoors.
I spent my childhood outdoors.
But yet, I don't think
I thought about caring
about the world or about
Mother Nature at all.
Pattie is synonymous in my life
with learning and unlearning.
The experience of looking in the mirror
and seeing the opposite gender,
was so powerful for me.
Because it checked at the
door every single thing
I thought I knew about myself.
And every single thing I thought
about the world around me.
And realizing that, I don't know
crap about the world.
Like, I have so much left to learn.
(waves crashing)
When I was walking into this lab,
on the edge of the beach, I had no idea
what I was walking into.
This is crazy.
Welcome to the seventies.
Hello!
- Hello!
- How are ya?
Is this y'all?
This is us.
- And then I met Jen.
All about the eye contact, okay?
Okay, are you ready?
One, two, three.
Science bitch.
- Science bitch.
(laughing)
- No, that was good,
you can't break though.
You can't break.
You have to be more serious.
Jen is an absolute science queen.
So I get into this lab,
and she starts whipping
out jar after jar of plastics.
- All of these polymers
are floating polymers.
Toothbrush.
- No way.
- Yeah, that's a toothbrush handle.
The reason you're seeing
this on the windward
side, is because it's
floating in from the Great
Pacific Garbage Patch.
And then the Hawaiian Islands are acting
as a comb.
And what piles up on our windward side
is the fragmented, old, floating polymers.
When we turn this corner, you will see
the open mouth of a sea turtle GI tract.
So, just prepare yourself for that.
- I was totally the kid growing
up that almost passed out
when we were dissecting
frogs in middle school.
What is that?
And I'm surprised I didn't fall
over, passed out.
- So, this is the esophagus.
Sorry, Wyn.
- No, you're good.
You're good.
We would dissect section after section
of the GI tract.
And then we cut open one new section
of the tract.
- Oh, lord!
- And hundreds of pieces
of plastic started appearing.
Are you kidding?
Oh my gosh.
That's literally so many pieces.
(chattering)
- This is insane.
- Almost every single turtle we open
has plastic in it.
We actually find actual
plastic bags in them.
Just balled up inside of the GI tract.
- And people think that
this isn't a problem.
And that this is not real.
- Marine debris is coming from all over
the world, even landlocked states.
You're from the midwest, I go home
and my family still doesn't wanna believe
that what they do has any effect on this.
And I think that everyone everywhere needs
to realize that what
they're doing does matter.
- It really hit me,
that this is one turtle.
And this is how much plastic it's eating.
And they find this time and time again.
- This particular loggerhead sea turtle
had a GI tract about as big as ours is.
So imagine my body, and I have eaten
all of these plastics.
It's taking up space in the gut
where prey and nutrition should be.
And, it can't feel good.
- I wanted to have a heart to heart
with Jen, because I could tell
the whole entire day,
just how much she cared about this.
You wanna hold hands?
- We're holding hands.
(laughing)
- We're friends now.
Her caring wasn't just in the lab.
This was her life.
So what's it actually humanly like?
- I bring my daughter to the beach,
and I can't even focus
on her building her sandcastle.
Because I'm picking up the trash
all around me.
Collecting it, to do my part, to try
to take it off, and be a good role
model for her.
We used to walk the beaches
and look for seashells.
Beachcombing was seashell collection.
Now, we beachcomb to pick
up and clean up trash.
We have three lines of evidence, three
separate studies telling
a really unfortunate
truth that this beautiful place
of the Hawaiian Islands is the earth's
most plastic polluted spot on the planet.
It's not the people in, that live
here, or travel here that's doing it.
It's coming from far away.
This is happening to us.
- Behind everything I do with Pattie,
there is a purpose of trying to make art
informed by what I'm learning,
what's actually affecting my life as Wyn.
So let's talk about the dresses.
- Well I know you wanted a little
bit larger pieces.
I guess talk to me about your thoughts.
- Angela is my friend, she is a member
of the Pattie community,
but her superpower
in this whole mix is fashion, and fashion
design, and being a sustainable designer.
- So this is what we're
originally thinking
for the net dress.
Representing the problem, climate
change, plastic crisis.
We have another look that's going
to be focused on plastic bag usage,
and the more daily impact
that your plastic consumption has.
And then, the last look
I wanna do is the letter dress.
- The community that's supported Pattie
is on fire with love for Mother Nature.
So I asked Pattie's community to send
in a letter, dear Mother Nature,
dot dot dot, and I told
them that we would do
a special little something with it.
Okay, so we have our sketches.
Now, the reality is, we need to do a lot
to make this actually practically work.
The biggest thing for me
is just how can we use
as many found materials
and as many different
materials as possible?
When I was in the lab, Jen also showed
me a video of her and her husband Hank,
on a boat, snorkeling out to see
this massive, massive
rope, caught on a reef.
And how, they were literally working
on a project to remove that rope
from the reef, and then she said,
well, why don't you just
come see it firsthand?
Okay, I'm really confused by this.
So, what is a ghost fishing net?
- Debris from offshore fishing efforts,
so, it's a conglomeration
of floating plastic debris.
So it just all gets twisted together,
all gets lumped up into a big mass.
- We jumped into the water,
and immediately, my scuba
mask filled with water.
(laughing) But, we made it work.
We made it work.
(snapping fingers)
And, we dove down, and saw this giant net
caught on the coral reef.
I didn't know, up until yesterday,
that most all, if not all of this rope
is literally plastic.
What's gonna happen if we don't stop this?
- It's one more problem, one more stressor
that the reefs here in
Hawaii have to face.
And eventually, if nobody does anything,
it's a pretty bleak future.
I've seen large sections of reef
that have just been
bulldozed by these things.
And, 10 years later, there's no regrowth.
If you see a problem
and you have the ability
to do something about it, I think,
if you can, you should.
I think it's important that we keep
that spark and drive to do something,
because it will make a difference.
- There is hope.
- Yeah.
- Yeah, absolutely.
- I think that I have to be optimistic,
it keeps me caring.
It's the only thing that keeps me caring.
Thank you, seriously it's--
- It's invaluable to see this firsthand.
And thanks for helping us
do our homework, for real.
- Thank you.
- Yes, our pleasure.
- Thanks for spreading the word.
- We're really trying.
We're gonna attach this to my body
and help the people notice.
(laughing)
See how it goes.
What this is making me
think about is how much
else in my life I turn a blind eye to.
'Cause it's so easy, as
a human, to turn a blind
eye, and not to care.
'Cause it's easier not to care,
it's easier to have
convenience in your life.
- Right.
Every day we're faced with choices,
from the second you wake up, to what kind
of toothbrush are you gonna use?
Have you started to look
critically at your choices every day?
We're done with just business as usual.
'Cause we can't do that.
Look how far it's gotten us.
- We talk all this talk, we've seen this.
But then it's time to
actually take action.
I don't always think
of advocacy as action.
I used to look at
rallies, and I always used
to wonder, are all these marches
actually doing anything?
Kawika!
Great to meet you, are you a hugger?
- Sure.
- How are you?
- How do you doing?
- Kawika is literally magic.
- The plastic water bottle's not mine,
it's my mom's.
- He is a local activist, born and raised
on the island, who is the leader
of the climate strike here in Hawaii.
- My friends were telling
me that they cringe
when they watch me, 'cause of the yeah!
(chuckling)
What do we want?
- Climate action!
- When do we want it?
- Now!
- Yeah!
(laughing)
- I need you to reenact that right now.
- What do we want?
- Climate action!
- When do we want it?
- Now, bitch!
- Yeah!
Our goal is to open people's minds,
to see the plastic pollution,
to see the effects of climate change,
of individual actions, and corporate
actions, and governmental actions.
At least, for my organization, US Youth
Climate Strike, we have to put the onus,
not the blame, but the pressure
to make change, we have to do that
on those that can.
And ensuring that everybody is included
in the conversation.
Ensuring that privileged communities
are doing their part.
Where native communities and poor
communities don't have to worry
about making these
changes that will affect,
literally, the way they survive.
This isn't a hobby, this is our life.
And so we have been taking action
on this, knock on wood, our state
will be the first state
to declare a climate emergency.
You know, people are
starting to really take
us for what we're saying.
- Okay, so, I was your seven thirty a.m.
meeting, where are you going today
and where are you going tomorrow?
- Oh, I have a strategy meeting
today, actually, to get plastic
banned on Oahu.
When do I not have a meeting
with a (chuckling) senator?
- Bitch, the tea is served!
What Kawika showed me the most
is that advocacy is action.
And that, our voice has power.
When you make your
voice heard, when you go
to a rally, when you
make yourself visible.
Your people see that, that you have
something to say.
So one of my absolute favorite things
to do in Pattie world,
is to do group hikes.
And, I thought it would
be the coolest thing
ever to merge together a group hike
with a trash pickup.
- Morning!
- Hey, how are you?
- Good, how are you?
- Great to meet you.
- Yeah, great to meet you too.
- Since moving to Hawaii,
Liz has been a part
of an amazing organization
called Sustainable Coastlines Hawaii.
What's up?
- Hey!
- How are y'all?
- Keep stuff in the middle of them.
(thudding)
(chattering)
- Okay, everyone, pile
in, super super close.
I just want to say a quick thank
you so much to Sustainable
Coastlines Hawaii.
They're a nonprofit here on the ground
that's doing incredible work
to actually take action, which I think
is really important.
So, find a new friend.
And, let's clean the beach.
Oh!
- We want our business
to go out of business.
(chuckling) We do not wanna be cleaning
beaches for the rest of
our lives, and nobody
should wanna be cleaning beaches.
It really is a gateway for people
to do lifestyle change.
And then it just is the super simple
things, whether it's your water bottle,
your bags, your takeout containers,
starting to bring your own, and not using
anything that's single use anymore.
Those steps start to snowball
into a whole lifestyle change.
- As deep as I'm digging, I'm seeing
plastic the whole entire way down.
- Yeah, like how?
- Like literally.
- Wow.
- Like a foot deep.
- Yep.
- They were telling me, they clean
up beach after beach, and week after week,
they come back, it's more and more plastic
up on the beach, every single day.
So what was really important for me
to learn is that this isn't something
that we just get to clean up our mess,
we have to stop making a
mess in the first place.
One, two, three.
We're trashy queens!
(whooping)
(laughing)
And now, I can die happy.
(laughing)
- Amazing.
After all of this, on the drive home,
I think I really realized how powerful
it is to have a friend like Liz.
When I decided to post
photos of me online,
in drag, I received the most hate
I have ever gotten in my life.
From people that I
thought were in my corner.
I decided to put my boots away.
And literally put them in my closet.
Because, it was too hard.
It was too rough.
I didn't wanna encounter the pain
anymore, of showing the
world who I really was.
Part of your biggest impact
can just be your friendship, and in you
opening up your world.
It's no bullshit, this
is what it's gonna take.
Because, I care about
this more, because you
care about this.
And it's like, if we
wanna talk about allyship,
this is allyship for Mother Nature.
Yes this is allyship as two queer people,
but, we can all be an
ally to Mother Nature.
- Absolutely.
I wanna give you a hug.
(groaning)
(laughing)
- What I love most about Liz,
and about everyone I've
met, is that no matter
their title, or who they were, they
were just a person that was down to care.
And was down to try.
People weren't where they
wanted to be, but they
were further than they ever thought
they would be.
I have to believe that we can care.
And I think the biggest thing I've taken
away from this whole
entire week is that, yeah
I'm outraged about this
now, but I also see
a lot of optimism about it.
- One, two, three!
(whooping)
Yeah!
- So we got the letters.
- Got the freakin' letters, babe.
(squealing)
- I'm so excited!
Let's open them up.
Oh--
- Oh, hell yes.
- My gosh.
Holy crap, did we get a lot of letters.
Oh my gosh, all of the rainbows.
This is so surreal to me, I can't believe
this many people wrote letters.
Thank you Mother Nature for your beauty.
I love climbing your trees, Nash.
- (laughing) Stop.
Dear Mother Nature, you are home
and I love you.
- I sense your timeless presence,
and feel your strength and wisdom
as you watch over me.
Dear Mother Nature, you've raised
me, and help me find the person
I am within.
To Mother Nature, thank
you for the big blue sea.
Always reminding me that I am so small,
but able to stay afloat.
- I am so grateful to call you home.
- You are my daily teacher.
I recycle and I walk to school every day.
Sincerely, Angie.
Angie walks to school!
- We all need to walk to school.
I love you, oh loving mother.
Bless you, oh divine beauty queen.
With abiding love, Anders.
Your sassy, gay, pastor child.
- Yay!
Oh my God.
- What?
- I love this.
These are beautiful (chuckling) letters.
I think I underestimated
how gorgeously written
these letters would be.
- To think that there's no hope there.
Or that there's no one or very few
people that care.
- But this is hundreds of letters.
- I know.
- I was so not prepared for how emotional
I was gonna be, reading these letters.
I knew that people cared
about Mother Nature.
I thought that people
would write in, but I had
no idea just how much Mother Nature
mattered to Pattie's community and to each
and every one of these people.
Mother Nature, I'm sorry I didn't try
harder earlier to save you.
Please forgive me, I'm doing my best now.
Stay whole and healthy, so my daughter
and her kids can enjoy you too.
I'm the only gay man in my town,
so I can't be publicly out yet.
But I wanted my letter to reflect
my pride to you, this community,
and to Mother Nature, that helps
me live every day.
Dear Mother Nature, I love the world
you've given me.
I'm a trans female to male, and going
outside is the biggest
relief to my dysphoria.
I want to save and protect your beautiful
skies, I want to share the wonderful wild
with my future boyfriend.
I've grown up climbing
trees, having campfires,
and rolling down hills.
I can't imagine not having these memories.
Dear Pattie Gonia, these letters were made
by a special needs science class
at a high school in Georgia.
Most of these students can't write,
so these letters are their artistic
representations of what
nature means to them.
Thank you for being our constant
source of inspiration.
Stay strong, stay awesome.
Hearing their stories,
and reading their words,
I knew that we could make such a special
piece of art.
My biggest hope was that
we could just do right
by all that we learned.
- These are absolutely gorgeous.
- (sniffing) Oh my God.
So then it was time to make some art.
And it all started with a poem,
that included everyone's words,
everyone's outrage, everyone's optimism.
Taking every piece of what we learned,
all of the action, and forming
it into one piece of
art, that we could build
everything off of.
At the end of the day, it's up to people
to decide what they're gonna do.
But I hope that this art and everything
we're making here this week
can open people's mind.
So there were three looks.
The first look was a dress made of 100%
found plastic bags.
- I'm afraid of you moving
before this is even reinforced.
- We wanted to make
this look because single
use plastic items are such a big part
of this problem.
We use it once, we throw it out.
So we used these found plastic
bags to make a whole
entire look out of it.
The second dress was a dress to personify
the problem, and the crisis here.
And really the outrage at
the whole entire issue.
What if I just wore this
as a necklace around here?
I love that.
I don't think we need to deconstruct
it more than that, I think we need
to use it how we find it, too.
So we made this look out of nets.
Not only the nets that we found
in the ocean with Hank, that he cut off
of the huge ball of nets, but also, all
the nets that we found
from our cleanups as well.
And the third look was a love letter
dress to Mother Natch.
A dress of optimism, a dress made
of every single person's letters
that they mailed in.
Of their love for Mother Nature,
and how much they care.
That also showed that
hope is on the horizon,
if we all can care.
The experience of doing drag reminded
me of how harsh this world can be.
But I just have to believe hope
is out there, and that all I needed
to do, was to be linked arm
stronger with the people
that are truly in my corner.
You have to put on your boots
in your life, whatever those boots
are for you.
Loving yourself for
all of you, and wearing
every single bit of who
you are is so important.
We are all queens.
It's not just Pattie, it's not just Queen
Mother Natch, it is in all of us.
And my biggest hope is that this video,
the art I get to make as Pattie,
that you watch this, and you realize
that your voice, your
actions, they have power.
And that really, it's
gonna take all of us.
It's gonna take all of us to care,
it's gonna take all of us to realize
that we have the ability
to make an impact,
and that we all need to show Mother Natch
some more love.
- Welcome to the planet, my dears.
Wipe your feet.
Come on in.
No more need for coats
in your Mother's den.
Take a look around.
Take a taste of the waste we found.
This is plastic.
And this, is tragic.
And it's not going away.
So let us sit at the dinner table
in the house we call nature.
Come, let's chat. 
I have an icebreaker.
Are we still lighting candles
while the house is burning?
While we throw flame and 
fight over who is right,
our Mother does not bite
her tongue or sit in silence.
Oh no.
Mother Nature's hella pissed.
You see, a woman knows
when she's been told.
When the men in the boardroom
think she's being too bold.
Too proud, too outspoken.
Too much to handle.
When she's been made
the doormat instead of the mantle.
Is this our message
in a plastic bottle?
XO, hugs, kisses. 
I'll try harder tomorrow.
Day after day we send our regards,
millions and millions of plastic discards.
P.S. We don't give a damn.
But we should really give a damn.
Now I know what you're saying,
- It's just a drop in the bucket, 
- it's just one plastic bag, one straw
- so suck it.
Well suck on this.
Right now, there are more plastic pieces
in the ocean than stars
in the Milky Way.
A billion plastic bags being
used every single day.
While we dress this mess
in political gains
in power changes and profits made,
our Mother says to go upstairs
and put on something new.
So come out of the closet
and put on your boots.
We've got a [beep] ton of work to do.
- Dear Mother Nature,
- Dear Mother Nature,
- Dear Mother Nature,
- Dear Mother Nature,
- I love you so much.
- I love you.
- I love you.
- I love you.
- May we do better.
- To step up and take care of you.
- To save and protect your beautiful sky.
- You've been there to listen when
I've struggled through my darkest days.
- Loving you has taught me how to love myself.
- Give us a chance to show our gratitude.
- You are beautiful, you are loved.
We will protect you.
So Queens, let me be straight.
Father Time is ticking on,
and what will be left is what we have done.
And what will be left
is what we have done.
Our mother is dying while
we are out living.
We must turn the tide
from taking to giving.
We will make a difference if we dare choose.
It's time that we act.
We've got everything to lose.
