ABSTRACT
This chapter explores how authors can theorize popular culture and analyse popular culture texts in relation to gendered security politics and practices. It explains how gender, popular culture, and security practices are connected by focusing on pop music, more specifically, another song by Katy Perry: the 2013 hit song 'Part of Me'. The chapter analyses it in two ways: as forming part of the 'obvious' and 'obtuse' meaning. It demonstrates how both these meanings rely on gendered logics of war. The chapter discusses what attuning to popular culture as an approach to analyse political practices might mean. To explore the politics of popular culture it is important to explore 'the political' beyond what is traditionally considered 'politics', but also beyond texts and written language, to also explore meaning-making through visual and affective global politics. Often reaching a much wider audience than typical policy documents, popular culture 'sites' can discuss 'politics' in a seemingly apolitical context, claiming to be 'just entertainment'.
