Who gets to shine in Glo’s Christmas ad? A bell hooks take on beauty, visibility, and what’s left out.

 23BE032963

          Glo’s “Feliz Navidad Nigeria!” ad is filled with beautiful moments: families laughing, couples exchanging gifts, and friends dancing to Afrobeat remixes of Christmas songs. It’s colorful, joyful, and proudly Nigerian. But if we look closer—really closer—we might start to see that not everything is as cheerful as it seems. Using ideas from the late feminist and cultural critic bell hooks, this essay takes a deeper look at the ad and what it’s really saying about how Nigerian people, especially Black joy, are being represented. hooks often warned us that just showing Black people on screen isn’t enough—it matters how they are shown, and why. In this case, Glo’s ad may seem like a celebration of Nigerian culture, but in many ways, it uses that culture just to sell something. According to hooks’ lens, the ad ends up showing a surface-level kind of happiness while leaving out the more complicated, real parts of Nigerian life.

 

          Let’s start with the good. One thing bell hooks always pushed for was Black people being seen on their own terms—not just through a Western or white lens. In that sense, Glo’s ad does a few things right. The people in the ad look proudly Nigerian: they wear traditional clothes, eat familiar food, dance to African beats, and celebrate Christmas in a local way. It doesn’t look like a European winter with snow and sweaters—it looks like a Lagos December with heat, family, and vibes. This kind of visibility matters. Like hooks said in her book Black Looks, when we see ourselves represented on screen in ways that feel true, it can make us feel seen and valued. And in that way, Glo deserves credit for trying to make an ad that feels culturally close to home.

 

           But hooks also reminded us: being visible isn’t the same as being free. Just because we’re shown smiling in ads doesn’t mean we’re being respected or understood. Sometimes, companies use our culture because it looks cool or trendy, but they don’t actually care about what we’re going through. That’s where Glo’s ad starts to feel a little hollow. Sure, it shows people happy—but it’s the kind of happiness you see in a commercial, not the real kind. There’s no mention of things like fuel shortages, network problems, rising food prices, or even the stress of trying to buy gifts during hard times. Everyone in the ad looks rich, rested, and ready to party. For most Nigerians, that’s not what Christmas actually feels like.

 

          This is what hooks called “selling a dream”—companies using feel-good images of Black life to sell us something, without dealing with the actual struggles many Black people face. In this case, the dream is that Glo will connect you with joy, family, and love—if you buy enough data. But in real life, a lot of people are trying to save every naira they can. So while the ad is full of smiles and sparkles, it quietly links happiness to spending money. hooks warned us about this too. She said that capitalism (the system that encourages buying and selling above all else) loves to take bits of Black culture and turn them into products. The result is that joy starts to feel fake—or worse, like something only people with money can afford.

 

          Another thing hooks cared deeply about was voice—whose story is being told, and who gets to tell it. In Glo’s ad, the characters don’t talk much. They just laugh, hug, smile, and dance. They don’t express their thoughts or worries. They don’t say what Christmas means to them, or how they feel about connecting with loved ones across distance. A narrator does most of the talking, and the characters are mostly just there to look happy. For hooks, that’s a big problem. She believed that Black people—especially Black women—should have space to speak for themselves, not just be used as decoration in a nice video. In this ad, they’re being shown, but not really heard. It’s like they’re there, but their voices don’t matter.

 

          In this ad, almost everyone looks middle- or upper-class. They live in clean, modern homes. They wear stylish clothes. Their hair and makeup are done. They have smartphones and Wi-Fi. It’s a beautiful image—but again, it’s only one version of reality. What about the millions of Nigerians who live in rural areas, or who struggle to afford mobile data, or who celebrate Christmas more quietly? They don’t exist in this world. For hooks, that’s a form of erasure—wiping out real people’s experiences just because they don’t fit the “feel good” picture companies want to sell.

 

          hooks also talked a lot about the danger of turning culture into a performance for profit. In this ad, traditional clothes, Afrobeat music, and Nigerian family life are all used as background to sell Glo’s products. It’s all very pretty—but what is it really doing? Instead of honoring culture, it’s using culture. The dancing, the laughter, the prayers—all of it is presented like a shiny wrapper around a Glo SIM card. hooks warned that this kind of performance can take something real and powerful—like Black tradition—and turn it into something shallow. Culture becomes an aesthetic, not something lived and respected.

 

          But to be fair, hooks didn’t believe in throwing away everything just because it’s flawed. She believed in the power of joy. She often said that Black joy is revolutionary—because for people who have faced so much pain and exclusion, being able to smile, dance, and feel love is itself a form of resistance. So yes, there is something valuable in seeing Nigerians enjoying their own kind of Christmas on screen. It tells us that we deserve softness, happiness, and connection. That’s something worth protecting. But the key question hooks would ask is this: is the ad showing joy, or is it selling it? If the joy only exists to make us buy something, is it really for us? Or is it just another product?

 

          In the end, Glo’s “Feliz Navidad Nigeria!” is a feel-good ad with a lot of surface charm. But when we use bell hooks’ ideas to dig deeper, we see that it’s more complicated than it looks. It shows Black people, but not always in a full or honest way. It uses Nigerian culture, but mainly as decoration. It celebrates joy, but ties that joy to money and consumption. hooks would likely say that the ad is trying—but it’s not doing enough. Real representation isn’t just about smiles and color; it’s about giving people real voices, real stories, and space for both joy and struggle.