Sis’ Bhuti: Breaking Gender Norms & Creating Badass Nails.

“My biggest goal for 2022 is collaboration.” – Naledi Thabo

Remember that one time when the Undertaker disappeared off the face of the earth, only for him to rise up from the dead a few weeks later?

Yeah, by default this is like one of those times. The difference here is that, I’m not the undertaker and I’m low key here because I’m pushing 🅿️.

Ang’zile ngoku ningi. I’m just here to tell the tale of how Naledi Thabo aka Sister Ntswembu is curving out her own space as one of the greatest nail techs to ever do it eSouthy. I came across a body of work she recently collaborated on titled “sis bhuti.” Now, upon first glance, you can see hands rocking the illest nail set to grace your IG feed. As you scroll through the pictures, you start to take in more of the surroundings and you realise that the models hands, belong to a he/him.

I hope you’ve been paying attention because this session is definitely going to double up as a young history lesson.

The title of this recently dropped body of work is called “sis bhuti” and looking back at the meaning and quo notation of this word, online sources reveal that “sis bhuthi” is a term derived from South African slang for sister (sis) and brother (bhuti). Over the years, this term has been used as a degrading term to describe gay members of the LQBTQI+ community. Not only that, but the term was later also used to describe male nurses who worked in the health industry.

This isn’t the first time where sister bhoza uses one of her many super powers to strike up conversations around topics that were previously deemed as “taboo”, where they were only acknowledging in certain spaces. She has taken her love for being a nail tech (a badass one, might I add) and found a way to also explore/create conversations around some of these topics.

We would like to send a big shout out to the entire team responsible for blessing us with this amazing body of work.

Check out the rest of their work here.

Till again next time, “sobuye sibonane” or whatever they said on that Dj Bongz song.