Militarization is often measured by comparing a country’s military spending in relation to its Gross Domestic Product and health spending. On such rankings, most European states are labelled ‘medium’ on the militarization scale. However, from a feminist perspective militarization is much better understood and analysed as a cultural transforming process by which a person gradually comes to imagine military needs and militaristic presumptions to be not only valuable but also normal. This paper starts with Cynthia Enloe’s idea that ‘a militarizing maneuver can look like a dance, not a struggle’ and explores militarization through mainstream television news, sports and entertainment. It shows how such maneuvers are performed through gendered notions of heroism; suggest that Britain’s level of militarization is much higher; and argues that pop culture is the most appropriate site to analyse a country’s level of militarization simply because this is where the effects of militarization are normalised.
