A heart-warming cross-generational advertisement for a Spanish whiskey company is earning international admiration for demonstrating trans-positive love and respect in honour of the Christmas season. Grab a box of tissues because this gesture between a grandfather and his trans granddaughter will bring tears to your eyes.

The three-minute commercial affectionately called ‘She’ was released by J&B Whiskey. It opens with an elderly man secretly borrowing his wife’s lipstick and trying to apply it to himself in the mirror. As the ad progresses, he reads beauty magazines and continues to carefully practice applying lipstick and eye shadow, gradually perfecting his skills.

Initially, viewers may assume that the man is expressing his own trans identity, but that changes when his family begins to arrive for Christmas.

He welcomes his trans granddaughter who is first introduced as Álvaro. While the family prepares Christmas dinner, he ushers her into another room and reveals that he’s been practicing makeup techniques so that he can better support her. He patiently helps her apply a beautiful full face of makeup, and her face immediately softens with gratitude.

They walk back into the dining room together, and she’s introduced to the family as Ana. Her whole family is moved by the gesture and is brought to tears seeing her features accentuated by the beautifully applied makeup. 

A member of Spain’s Congress of Deputies, Pablo Echenique, noted that the ad’s existence demonstrates the importance of protecting trans rights, sharing that it is baffling that there are political parties that cannot understand this. He even said that the ad, “made this straight cis man cry”.

Este anuncio de @jb_spain es una hermosura, a este hombre cis hetero le ha hecho llorar y su propia existencia significa que la necesidad de blindar los derechos de las personas trans es mayoritaria en la sociedad.

Es inexplicable que haya grupos políticos que no lo entiendan. pic.twitter.com/CWR2uCHwZe

— Pablo Echenique (@PabloEchenique) December 3, 2022

The marketing manager of the Spanish whiskey parent company, Diageo, said the trans advertisement was created to give “visibility to a reality that thousands of people face, including the LGBTQ+ collective, who seek a safe space to be and show themselves openly”.

The commercial shares this tagline, “The magic is not only in Christmas. It is also in us.”

The whole ad exudes love, acceptance, and respect which is a lovely thing to see as we approach the holiday season.