Songfacts®:

• One of Ani DiFranco's most famous songs, "32 Flavors" is written from the perspective of an overlooked, "plain" girl who secretly tries to help people out while being ignored and hidden from view.
  
  In a 2025 interview with Song Diving, DiFranco explained, "I was expressing a desire for kinship with other women instead of competition. I wanted to be part of a supportive community. It's a feminist's kind of longing, not to always be fighting to be on top. We're a web, not a totem pole."
• Song song appears on DiFranco's 1995 album Not a Pretty Girl, where it encapsulates the album's title. DiFranco was getting a lot of attention around this time not just for her incisive, feminist songwriting, but also for her business model: She released her music on her own label, Righteous Babe Records, and stayed fiercely independent. This earned a fair amount of press attention and a devoted fanbase. Back in the '90s, "selling out" to a major label was a mark of dishonor; DiFranco did the opposite and was revered for her efforts.
• The song isn't just defeated hand-wringing and belly-aching about the plight of those born without aesthetic gifts. DiFranco explained that it's meant to make listeners think about the invisible people in their own lives: the ones floating in their orbits, forgotten, yet still helping them out and caring from afar.
• The pop singer Alana Davis released a "32 Flavors" cover as her debut single off her album Blame It on Me in 1997. Her version went to #37 on the Hot 100; it's the only song written by Ani DiFranco ever to hit that chart. We didn't hear much from Davis after this; she never again reached that chart.
• The title "32 Flavors" refers to the "31 Flavors" Baskin-Robbins ice cream company slogan. The girl in this song might not think she's pretty, but she's confident she's the "32nd flavor and then some."
• In 1999 the National Football League used this song in an ad campaign featuring players with jersey number 32.
• In the outro to his 1998 song "You’re My Flavor," Lenny Kravitz refers to this song when he says, "All 32, baby."
• In her Song Diving interview, DiFranco said the song's rhythm was inspired by the guitar styling of West African musicians such as Baaba Maal and Ali Farka Touré.