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  • 2014-08-15 (xsd:date)
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  • 'Undercover Colors': A Rape Drug-Detecting Nail Polish (en)
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  • In August 2014, interest in an in-development product called Undercover Colors swept the social web. According to the students who hatched the idea behind Undercover Colors, this nail polish formula would work to detect the presence of drugs commonly used to facilitate date rape. Undercover Colors maintained a Facebook page, on which the company's social media team explained why the product was conceived and how it would work: However, Undercover Colors didn't demonstrate they had anything more tangible than a concept: we saw no evidence that the start-up had produced an effective prototype, and some critics maintained that the concept of such a drug-detecting fingernail polish wasn't even a feasible one: The social media pages associated with the nail polish product have since been taken down, and the Undercover Colors website switched to promoting a product called SipChips: single-use, individually wrapped drug test kits that could be unobtrusively attached to key fobs or cellphones. The Undercover Colors FAQ explained why the company moved away from marketing a drug-detecting nail polish product: In December 2018, Undercover Colors announced the release of the SipChip product that took the place of the originally planned nail polish: While interest in nail polish and chips that detect common drugs used in date rape was initially high, not everyone was pleased with the idea. Rape prevention advocates posited that the nail polish drug detection system was a form of tacit victim blaming, one which suggested the onus should be on potential victims to prevent rape, as feminist writer Jessica Valenti opined in a column for the Guardian: (en)
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