Carbon Costume

In Lollipop Chainsaw, Juliet Starling (voiced by Tara Strong) is a cheerleader who finds herself having to hack and slash her way through zombie hordes at San Romero High School. Luckily she’s armed with a chainsaw. To go all out with this look, you’ll want to include her boyfriend Nick’s severed-but-still-living head to hang on the belt of your costume.

Olivia Rodrigo is a pop singer/songwriter of today’s music scene. Her two full length albums are Sour and Guts. One of the standout tracks on Sour is “Good 4 U” – a song about how a lover is seeing a new girl without any consideration for how Olivia feels. The music video features Olivia setting a room on fire and also as a cheerleader, blending preppy and punk aesthetics. The video has nearly 450 million views on Youtube and the song has over 1 billion streams on Spotify.

Addison Wells (played by Meg Donnelly) is the main protagonist of the Disney Channel original movie franchise Z-O-M-B-I-E-S. Addison is a cheerleader at Seabrook High School.  Born with white hair, she wears a wig for most of her life until it is revealed she is actually half-alien and her hair grows to its natural blue color.  There are three ways you could go about dressing as Addison:  in her regular clothing, a cheerleading uniform, or after she embraces her otherworldy identity.  The first two are relatively simple, rely on shades of pink and a bubbly attitude as well as a blonde wig.  For her alien look, you’ll want to layer plenty of metallic silver pieces as well as a blue skirt and wig.

Chrissy Cunningham (Grace Van Dien) is a character in the Netflix original hit series, Stranger Things. She appears in the first installment of the fourth season. On the outside, Chrissy is your typical cheerleader: popular, preppy, girly. But she struggles on the inside, particularly with body image and verbal abuse from her mother. Vecna uses these insecurities against her, and she becomes its first victim. She gets possessed and murdered while hanging with Eddie Munson, who she had begun to grow close with in an unlikely friendship.

Stu (voiced by Nat Faxon) is a character on the animated Netflix series Harvey Girls Forever!  Stu is the only male member of the Fighting Bananas Cheer Squad and a friend of Audrey.  Stu’s costume consists of his cheer uniform as well as mint-framed sunglasses and dark greenish-blue hair.  You may need to get a little creative to recreate Stu’s cheer sweatshirt.  You can focus on the chevron print or take a DIY approach and spruce up a plain white track jacket with some fabric paint.  Use a banana decal or patch to try and match the Fighting Banana mascot on Stu’s original uniform.

Ali Mills (played by Elisabeth Shue) is a main character in the 1984 movie The Karate Kid.  Ali befriends Daniel LaRusso as he trains for the All-Valley Karate Championships under Mr. Miyagi.  A popular and stylish girl, Ali wears a number of 80s-inspired outfits throughout the film.  If you can’t find the exact pieces to match her costuming, be sure to focus on the colors and silhouettes; she often wears bold colors but in more pastel shades than many might associate with the decade’s fashions.

Brittany S. Pierce (played by Heather Morris) is a cheerleader and member of the New Directions on Glee.  Often portrayed as typical “dumb blonde,” Brittany is emotionally intelligent and openly bisexual.  Eventually, she marries her longtime friend and on-and-off love interest Santana Lopez.  Especially in the early season, Brittany is typically seen wearing her William McKinley High School cheer uniform, possibly with a slushie in hand to throw at glee club members like Rachel Berry, Kurt Hummel, or Artie Abrams before they become friends.

In American Beauty, Angela Hayes (Mena Suvari) is a high school cheerleader. She is the object of infatuation from her friend’s dad Lester Burnham, who is experiencing a midlife crisis. In his fantasy, she reveals what she’s got underneath her cheerleading uniform, and it’s a whole lot of roes petals.