32 Flavors – Ani DiFranco

“Squint your eyes and look closer/ I am not between you and your ambition/ I am a poster girl with no poster/ I am 32 flavors and then some/ And I’m beyond your peripheral vision/ so you might want to turn your head/ ‘cause some day you’re going to get hungry/ and eating most of the words you just said/ Both my parents taught me about good will/And I have done well by their names/ Just the kindness I’ve lavished on strangers/ Is more than I can explain/ Still there’s many who’ve turned out their porch lights/ Just so I would think they were not home/And hid in the dark of their windows/ Till I’d passed and left them alone.”

I was thinking about the lyrics of 32 Flavors through the lens of Sedgwick in Queer and Now, “–since being a survivor on this scene is a matter of surviving into threat, stigma, the spiraling violence of gay- and lesbian-bashing, and (in the AIDS emergency) the omnipresence of somatic fear and wrenching loss.” (pg 3)

The opening lines to this song are such strong words, in my opinion. She tells the listener that she is not stopping them from pursuing whatever it is they want. She happens to be different, and she does not have any other agenda other then pointing out her right to happiness as well. Ani tells her audience that although she has learned her parents’ lessons well about how to behave with respect towards strangers, her neighbors feel they need not show her the same respect, because she falls outside of that which is culturally acceptable to them. They feel it is better to scurry inside and hide, as if she were an ominous threat rather then accept her as a valuable and equal member of the community. Maybe they do think of her as a threat, embodying an unfamiliar and frightening alternate reality to their “little pink houses.” The cognitive effort required in informing one’s self about a world full of the complexity of the human condition is hard to fit in between Fox News and Dancing with the Stars. But Ani rises above the haters, saying, “I never try to give me life meaning by demeaning you” which is a statement of strength. She does not have to retaliate at their ignorance, nor does she allow them the power over her to determine what makes her happy. “God help you if you are a phoenix and you dare to rise up from the ash, a 1,000 eyes will smolder with jealousy while you are just flying past” tells me that those who would “smolder” are absolutely inconsequential in the eyes of the phoenix, and that’s how it should remain.