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So, This Exists: Designer Pepper Spray

by Jenny Hollander

So, this exists.

Meet "Blingsting" — all the power of a crime-busting pepper spray, wrapped up in a handy diamanté tin. If you did need to whip it out, the spray shoots out through a heart-shaped nozzle, which would certainly throw off an unsuspecting criminal.

The bottle comes in pink, silver, red, and black diamanté, as well as a four-bottle "gift set," which confuses us. (That would just be a terrible gift, plus who is this person that needs that much pepper spray?)

Blingsting is the brainchild of mother-daughter collaboration Andrea and Kathy Atteberry. "My dad was always bringing home ugly pepper spray from the car wash for my mom and me," she told New York Magazine of creating the product. "We always just threw it away, because we’re both really girly and we like things to be cute and fabulous." Because don't we all worry about looking fierce when a dude is trailing us home.

Atteberry believes that turning pepper spray into a cute and fashionable accessory will encourage women to carry it. Maybe she's not wrong, but she's a little late in the game. You can already get lipstick-shaped pepper sprays, neon pepper sprays covered in Swarovski crystals, and tiny mace sprays that attach to your iPhone case.

But Atteberry is right about one thing: "Pepper spray is kind of hard to find," she tells New York. Yes, you can get pepper spray from auto shops and online, but it's not easily found in convenience stores or in, say, vending machines. Blingsting is working to provide the sprays to college students, but so far, Blingsting is only available online.

"My website is cheeky, my packaging is cheeky," says Atteberry. (The website's masthead: "Pepper Spray So Cute, It, Like, Hurts.") "But if that’s going to get a girl to carry it with her, or make just one smarter choice, then that’s great."

(Image: Blingsting)