be well: a lipstick that could save your life
I bought pepper spray when I started dating, carried it that week and never again. What I do always carry- lip gloss or lipstick or lip balm.
That’s exactly why Joy Hoover, founder of Esōes (pronounced ‘SOS’) Cosmetics, chose to invent a lipstick/lip gloss tube that helps fight drug-facilitated sexual assault and violence. How? The tube has a built-in roofie test strip that you use to test your alcoholic or no-alcoholic drink. Just remove the strip from the bottom and add a drop of liquid. If two lines appear, your beverage is safe to drink.
For now, the strips only test non-dairy drinks for Benzos (Benzodiazepines: Flunitrazepam (roofies), Valium, Xanax, Ativan, Klonopin) but they’ll soon be able to test for other date rape drugs.
And Joy thought of everything. The tube also has a panic button that when connected to the Esōes safety app, it knows your location, can contact emergency services, send texts, make calls and play an alarm! She recently used it to call the fire department during a house fire.
Joy even gave us color options with empowering names! My favs include ‘It’s Not The Dress’, ‘We Believe You’ and ‘No Means No’.
It’s so inspiring to learn about a woman-owned business working to keep us all safer. And let’s be honest, we can all be better about personal safety. Thanks to Joy, we can look good and sip safer.
Joy Hoover
Inventor, Founder & CEO Esōes Cosmetics