The 2LoveMyLips gloss is available in five different "seductive" colors. On the website, the product is described as "sasy (sic) zestful two-in-one lip plumping breath freshening lip gloss, cleverly packaged to include a drink spike detector testing kit!" Tracy Whittaker, managing director of 2LoveMy, says that the date rape kit is easy to use and requires only a single drop of the suspicious drink. "If they turn blue tell your friends immediately and get help from security and the police," she said.

The website describes the design more fully. It seems like the gloss is not actually attached to the drug testing strip, but instead comes with a separate card inside the box. In their mission statement, 2LoveMy explains:

Our primary goal is to promote 2 LOVE MY LIPS as a fashionable brand with a distinctive logo that is easily recognisable to women within our target age group of 16 to 50.

2 LOVE MY LIPS aims to bring safety and beauty to the finger tips of women of all ages. A revolutionary female concept, where women's beauty and safety blend together so transparently that the customer buys beauty and acquires safety almost subliminally.

Something about this rubs me the wrong way. It is great that they want to help women avoid creepy rapist assholes, but it seems a little odd that this is marketed as the merger of beauty and safety. Whittaker says she hopes to sell the gloss in vending machines and bar toilets, the very places, Cosmetics Design notes, that women will need it most. This just seems like an obnoxious way to sell their lip gloss to scared women, who are forced to buy their pricey ($16 plus tax!) product when what they really want is a way to tell whether or not they are in immediate physical danger. Perhaps I'm reading too much into it, but given all the restrictions stated on their website (you cannot use the test with wine, most fruit juices, and the test does not detect Rohypnol), it may just give women a false sense of safety while promoting sales of yet another beauty product we don't really need. In fact, the best thing about 2LoveMyLips is a paragraph on the company's website that advises women to buy their own drinks, throw out any beverages that have been left unattended, and trust their own instincts. But if we do all that, what's the use of the lip gloss?

Date Rape-Preventing Lip Gloss Debuts [Cosmetics Design]
2LoveMyLips [Official Site]

In the clip at left, two actors, Brigitte and John, sit at a bar pretending to be on a date. While Brigitte is in the bathroom, John pours a powder in her drink. While, as anchor John Quinones says, what's frightening is that this happens in real life, it's unlikely this exact scenario would happen, since no human has ever responded to his date saying she feels ill by saying, "I have a pool at my house." The terribly written skit is performed in front of a group of guys and a middle-aged woman, and you can probably guess who intervenes and tells Bridgitte she's been drugged.

As pointed out on Shakesville, the word "rape" is never uttered during this segment. When Bridgitte and the woman cry and hug after it's revealed that it was just an act, Quinones says "Why are you crying? You're an actress!" He adds that Bridgitte was probably all worked up because she was drugged in real life two years ago, but "no one came to her rescue until after she had taken the drink."

Read This—and Resolve Again to Be All In [Shakesville]

Marie Claire's Abigail Haworth treats the issue in classic women's magazine style, presenting it as a semi-titillating cautionary tale of risky sex in an exotic locale. It's set in Hong Kong's "pulsating red-light district of Wan Chai," "a riot of neon-lit sleaze" which "heaves with easily available female flesh." Much of this heaving flesh belongs to "bar girls," legal prostitutes who flirt with Western men and later sell them sex. Haworth visits one nightclub, Neptune II, where "there are no Asian men (rich Hong Kongers have their own red-light area) and not a single Western woman."

Dragon-lady stereotyping aside (horrors! A bar where Asian women prey on white men with not a white girl in sight!), the specifics of the cases are pretty disturbing. Executive Simon Garcia says he didn't intend to leave Neptune II with a strange woman, but the last thing he remembers is dizzily exiting the bar with her on Friday night. He woke up at 2 a.m. on Sunday, minus his cell phone, wallet, and watch. Police found Rohypnol in his urine. And some men, including Finland's former police chief, have died after being dosed with Rohypnol by prostitutes.

But bar girl Juli gives the unsettling flip side to the old "she asked for it" excuse: "of course it's bad news if a guy dies or loses his marriage because his wife finds out, but nobody forces them to come to Wan Chai." She adds, "we've always had to protect ourselves from men. Maybe now it's their turn to start protecting themselves from us."

Dangerous Liaisons [Marie Claire]

Note that Sexactivator is marketed as a product for men to turn on "your woman" — suggesting that a guy slip weird pheromone shit into a stranger's drink is apparently a sleaze-bridge too far. Still, it's hard in a not to assume that some men will use this at bars or parties with women they don't know. Especially when it's touted next to Mate Magnet Cologne. After all, "using pheromones have been proven the most gorgeous women will desire to have you immediately." (Also, using grammar.)

The sad thing about these products in general (and yes, there is a sad thing, among many scary and enraging things) is that they bank on the idea that men need products to artificially induce women to like them. This implies not only that women deserve to have their autonomy subverted by chemical agents, but also that men are not enough on their own. Mate Magnet and Sexactivator are sort of like men's versions of wrinkle creams and fat-burning supplements — the opposite sex does not like you as you are, advertisers shout, but they will love you with this snake oil!

Men's Fitness [Official Site]

• According to a new government study, a few extra pounds won't kill you! [ABC News]
  
• Or they will kill you! Science daily says the overweight risk dying from cardiovascular disease, and the underweight have increased mortality from a shitload of other diseases! [Science Daily]
  
• Guess what? A TON of other things besides your weight can make you kick the bucket. If you're angry a lot, you'll probably have stroke. If you pee in the ocean, you'll get eaten by a shark. Here's a list of 48 other things you probably shouldn't do unless you want to die. [MSNBC]
  
• Your kids could die if they eat the beads from an Australian toy called Bindeez. Ingesting the toy was found to mimic the effects of roofies! [Wall Street Journal]

• Oh hey guys, that HIV vaccine we gave you? Yeah, it might make you more susceptible to the disease. Whoops! [Wall Street Journal]
• Hm, you probably shouldn't go abroad either, because you might get stabbed by your roommate and/or her sketchy Italian boyfriend and/or someone else. [ABC News]
• Or you might just get bedbugs. Amazingly itchy! [USA Today]
• Well at least there are still adorable puppies out there, and apparently 86% of people spend more time with their puppies than they do with their children. Awww. [Pet Health Care]