‘Supermodel’
— Nix Thérèse
In ‘Supermodel’, SZA untangles the many feelings and aspects of a former relationship. This landscape shows her wrestling with many selves—she’s determined to move on, she’s (justified in) being petty, she recognizes the attachment she’s made, she’s still asking for emotional support. She switches on a line to line basis.
Consider: “Lemme tell you a secret. I been secretly banging your homeboy. Why you in Vegas all up on a Valentine’s Day? Why am I so easy to forget like that?” I love that we get both the jab and the feeling that inspired it in successive order. She essentially tells him that he wasn’t all that in a singsong voice that feels more keep-you-up-at-night than nursery rhyme, why he’s gone quickly becoming rhetorical while she’s confident in her decisions. “Why am I so easy…” calls us to imagine spaces in which she wouldn’t be forgotten, to see more permutations of her that exist outside of this relationship. Why is she so easy to forget here? Because here is singular; here is his.
While ‘Supermodel’ is laid out as a series of confessions & questions towards this ex-boyfriend, at this point they aren’t really meant for him. Really asking/saying this one-on-one might reinstate the connection or further destroy her, but pushing them into a space where others can hear/weigh in has a guaranteed outcome—she won’t carry this alone. Going back to alternates, every “I need you” acts as a direct flip of “I need me”, showing us how delicately she has to decide if she’s gonna build herself up or lean on another. She wants the two entwined, but in this relationship, it’s impossible. When she says, “I can be your supermodel if you believe, if you see it in me”, the your (as in “I’ll create this for you specifically, not even myself”) & ifs (as in “you gotta give me something to work with”) are crucial.
In the video, having this assumably ex-boyfriend loom in her personal spaces only to laugh throughout really upset me, especially because the panning implies she’s the only person who can see/hear him. He’s uncentered and muted, a phantom of the past only drawn into the room by her remembering. Yet the shots in the bedroom feel like a modified Snow White where she’s centered over everything else. SZA’s not questioning her beauty, no longer tapping the glass and asking for its confirmation that she can exist as she wants. Even as an audience, we can’t hear him over the pour of her confessions. We’re rightfully swept up in her.
After SZA’s guided to the forest, she struts along as light & glitter stream across her and the trees, cheered on by all the young girls who only add more glitter to crown her. Orbs of light appear under each step and a subtle smirk plays across her lips until she spies him at the foot of her runway. He’s laughing so hard that his eyes barely flutter open. He’s laughing so hard that the glitter gets pulled into the void of his body and never returns. He’s always laughing until he’s laughed at: a crowd of children and SZA herself shoot sparks under his feet as he bounces around in agony. This transmutation of her old feelings, ones that popped inside her body and kept her curled in insecurity like this ex on the ground, feels apt & satisfying. The lyrics hit a vulnerability that sometimes feels directly in the midst of this mess, so we know that this current freedom & joy are hard-won. Let’s revel in them with her.