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Undercover Colors

2014viral controversydead

Published October 16, 2026

Undercover Colors is a nail polish brand created in 2014 by four North Carolina State University students that claimed to change color when dipped into drinks spiked with Rohypnol, Xanax or GHB. The product went viral in late August 2014 after Jezebel and Time coverage split readers between praise for an anti-assault tool and criticism that it placed safety burdens on women. The backlash itself turned into jokes on August 26, when reporter Andrea Grimes' sarcastic tweet earned over 8,000 retweets in 48 hours and Redditor atrain444 posted a defensive AdviceAnimals macro.

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Overview

Undercover Colors lives on less as the product itself than as the discourse pattern it kicked off in a two-day stretch in late August 2014. Feminist bloggers at Jezebel, Huffington Post and Time argued that drug-detecting polish shifts the work of preventing assault onto potential victims, while Reddit threads defended the four undergraduate inventors against what commenters called feminist overreach12.

Two reaction posts crystallized the two sides. Andrea Grimes' tweet joked that convincing men to actually wear the polish was the real difficulty, earning over 8,100 favorites and 8,000 retweets within 48 hours6. On the opposite side, Redditor atrain444 posted an AdviceAnimals-style image macro titled 'How the guys who invented a date-rape drug detecting nail polish feel after being attacked by feminists for promoting rape culture,' gathering more than 3,600 upvotes at 92% approval on r/AdviceAnimals7.

Origin & Background

Platform
News blogs (Jezebel, Animal New York) / Twitter and Reddit (viral spread)
Date
2014

In early 2014, four North Carolina State University undergraduates, Tyler Confrey-Maloney, Stephen Gray, Ankesh Madan and Tasso Von Windheim, founded the Undercover Colors startup around a nail polish they said would detect common date-rape drugs on contact with a spiked drink4. The team registered UndercoverColors.com on January 16, 2014 and launched a company Facebook page for product updates on April 158.

Media debate did not catch fire until August. Britain's Daily Mail covered the invention on August 22, 2014, and Jezebel followed with 'This Nail Polish Changes Color When Exposed to Date Rape Drugs' on August 24, which gave the startup a cautiously interested write-up1. By August 26, feminist critics and defensive meme posters were going at each other across Twitter and Reddit6.

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How It Spread

On August 26, 2014, Animal New York published 'Date Rape Drug-Detecting Nail Polish Won't Work,' arguing the detection chemistry could not deliver reliable results in a dim bar setting5. The same afternoon, Texas political reporter Andrea Grimes tweeted that the real challenge was getting men to wear anti-rape nail polish in the first place, a line that earned over 8,100 favorites and 8,000 retweets within 48 hours6.

Also on August 26, Redditor atrain444 posted an AdviceAnimals-style macro to r/AdviceAnimals captioned as how the inventors must feel after being attacked by feminists for promoting rape culture, which gathered more than 3,600 upvotes at 92% approval within two days7. The post functioned as a defensive mirror image of the Grimes tweet, flipping the sarcasm back at critics.

The next day, August 27, Huffington Post contributor Sophia Kerby wrote that products like Undercover Colors 'perpetuate rape culture'2, and Time ran Soraya Chemaly's op-ed 'I Shouldn't Have to Dip My Nails in a Drink to Reduce My Risk of Rape'3. After that short cycle, mainstream coverage faded, and Undercover Colors is now mostly recalled as the 2014 flashpoint for debate over anti-rape consumer products4.

Timeline

2014-01-16

Undercover Colors domain UndercoverColors.com is registered by NC State undergraduates Confrey-Maloney, Gray, Madan and Von Windheim.

2014-04-15

The Undercover Colors Facebook page launches to post updates on the drug-detecting nail polish.

2014-08-22

Britain's Daily Mail reports on the invention, kicking off wider English-language blog coverage.

2014-08-24

Jezebel publishes 'This Nail Polish Changes Color When Exposed to Date Rape Drugs' with a cautiously interested angle.

2014-08-26

Animal New York publishes a chemistry-skeptic takedown; Andrea Grimes' sarcastic tweet goes viral; Redditor atrain444 posts the defensive AdviceAnimals macro to r/AdviceAnimals.

2014-08-27

Huffington Post's Sophia Kerby and Time's Soraya Chemaly both publish op-eds arguing that the product perpetuates rape culture.

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