The leader of what she calls the "lipstick revolution," Safety Activist Joy Hoover is our guest this week on Nevada Week In Person.

♪♪♪ Support for Nevada Week In Person is provided by Senator William H. Hernstadt.

Welcome to Nevada Week In Person.

I'm Amber Renee Dixon.

Her career started in hair and makeup and evolved into helping victims of sex trafficking and domestic abuse.

Currently combining both areas of expertise, Joy Hoover, Inventor, Founder, and CEO of Eses Cosmetics, thank you for joining Nevada Week In Person.

(Joy Hoover) Such a pleasure.

Thanks for having me.

-So tell me what is the lipstick revolution and what makes you the right leader for it?

-Yes, absolutely.

So we're combining beauty, science, and technology to create a cosmetics company which is patented, by the way, that could save your life.

And so what does that mean?

It really encompasses multiple facets of safety.

So our lipstick actually has a tech-enabled panic button that connects to a customizable safety app.

So with a push of a button on your lipstick, you can send your location to someone, send a customized text or phone call, you can sound a loud alarm, or you can even contact emergency services who can priority dispatch police or other authorities to your location.

And not only that, it also has drink testing strips in the base of it that create-- we have a container that creates the diagnostic accuracy of the test strips.

So when you test your drink, it will tell you with two lines it's safe or one line if it detects benzodiazepines.

-So then in your experience, you must have realized there is a big need for something like this.

What's in that experience?

-Yeah.

We've been in Vegas for 14 years, and the populations that we've been serving are folks experiencing trafficking, gender-based violence.

And after working with over 10,000 survivors, we really started to like really look into what is it that's preventing this.

We found after 11 1/2 years of working in nonprofit that the numbers were actually not only not decreasing, they were increasing by about 2.9% year over year.

So between the clients we were serving and also our own personal experiences of experiencing violence and losing my mother-in-law and brother-in-law to domestic violence, it's just it's really been this 14 years of going, What is there that's more?

How can we prevent this?

How can we create a safer world for our daughters and for families everywhere?

-Your mother-in-law and brother-in-law, what happened?

-Yeah.

So April 10, 2013, we just had a new baby, our first daughter Vivian eight days before, and we got a phone call, thinking that the call was going to be like, Hey, let's meet up early for dinner to see your new baby.

And that call was that we had lost-- my father-in-law had kind of lost touch with reality after being abusive for over 40 years and had shot and killed my mother-in-law, my brother-in-law, and then himself.

So yeah, that's the kind of thing, right, that you experience that-- it really changes your entire world.

And we just, you know, navigated the 11th anniversary of that date.

And we were talking to our therapist about it, and, Is it kind of weird that 11 years later, it still feels like, the weight of it.

And he was like, No.

Like that was such a traumatic life-changing experience.

And it took us a long time to heal.

And we talk a lot about leading through our, our scars, not our wounds.

So it took us a lot of years to really navigate that story and navigate our own experiences and go, Okay, we're ready to lead out of our scars and to really start, you know, preventing this.

-When you say "we," you're talking about you and your husband?

-Yes.

-Tell me about him.

And when you say "we," you are a team?

-100%.

We've been together 20 years.

We've basically grown up together.

And like there is no joy without Phil, no Phil without joy at this point.

We are like truly best friends.

But not only that, like we, when we met in, I mean literally forever ago, in 2004, for us, it was really like we felt like we met our match.

And we met our match of both of our hearts, and our passions were to hold space with and connect with marginalized communities.

We felt passionate about people that were kicked out of the churches we were part of or the spaces we were part of.

That all had a story, and we were like something, there's something about you that's valuable and, like, we want to sit and listen, we want to connect with you.

So really the trajectory of our life changed by the thousands and thousands of people we sat with, we provided resources for, and we supported over the years.

And like the trajectory of who we are changed, and so that has navigated our future.

-Before founding Cupcake Girls here in Las Vegas, you had moved here with him from Michigan.

Both of you are from Michigan?

-Yep.

-Okay.

And evangelical Christian background, right?

-Mm-hmm.

-So what were in those roots of you both getting together, and who were you helping at that point?

-You know, we met, yeah, in an evangelical church, and so we both were brought up in that religion.

And I think, you know, the foundation of who we are is love, and I think that we thought we found that in the church, and what we realized is we couldn't find that in the church because unconditional love didn't exist inside an institution like that.

And so it really shifted a lot of both of our upbringings from the kind of shame-based experiences or purity culture, the things that we internalized, and we started deconstructing that together, thankfully.

And you know, I think one of the best ways to explain it, and it's kind of intense, but, you know, my father-in-law took his life inside their home after he took my mother-in-law and father's life.

And on the top of the stairs is where he was.

And the top of their stairs was a scripture, and the scripture says: "Peace I leave with you."

And I think a lot of times in religion, especially in fundamentalist religions, there's a lot of conversation and a lot of talk about this scripture or this specific belief, but it is not internalized.

And so what we did is we took some of the good and we started to internalize, what does unconditional love look like for ourselves, for our community?

What does it look like in action, and truthfully, we found that outside of religion.

And now we get to live our life in such an authentic way to what we truly believe love is.

-Your entry into helping victims of sex trafficking and domestic abuse victims, how did that take place?

-Yeah.

So I think, again, kind of that like passion of it, like, there's this thing that he has tattooed on him that says, "Your life is not your own."

And the meaning for that, really, is that it's not about us, but it's about our community.

And I think our goal has always been to focus on like, let's heal ourselves so we can heal the world.

And really what comes of that is to be able to look outside of ourself and look at people groups that maybe are undercared-for, underserved, and truly cannot access the same things we can.

-And how did you become aware of these people?

-We were visiting Vegas and started researching, because you can't really come to Vegas without seeing the billboards, the card flickers, like all that stuff.

Well, some tourists might be like, Oh, yeah, whatever.

For us it was, What is this?

Like, let us understand more about the adult industry.

Let us understand more about the logistics.

How many people are working?

How many people are being served?

And we found there's like 100,000 people in Vegas that are working in the adult industry.

We found that's a multi-billion dollar industry, bigger than most sports teams combined.

And we found that as far as access to resources for those folks, there was very little, especially with no condition, no expectation of leaving or becoming a specific religion.

And so we found, we started literally bringing-- I brought my makeup kit and my hair supplies into strip clubs, into brothels, at adult conventions, and just sat and listened to folks as I was spraying their hair or doing lipstick.

And I started hearing their stories.

I started hearing about custody battles.

I started hearing about abuse at home.

I started covering up bruises on bodies because they had to work that day.

I started hearing about someone becoming pregnant from their pimp and not wanting to have another child, but also not wanting to lose that baby.

And so these were things that in my box of religion, there was-- that was black and white.

And I realized most stuff is not black and white because people are not black and white.

And so as I sat with those people and heard their stories completely without judgment, and my response was, How can I help?

What do you need?

And the things started rolling in.

I need an attorney.

I need a doctor.

I need a therapist.

I need a lawyer.

And so I literally started calling people all over the, all over town.

Like 20 dentists, Hey, I have a girl with an abscess in her tooth.

Can you help?

20 days later, I found someone and I drove her to the dentist.

And it just started with that.

And it ended with serving over 10,000 individuals, that when we can meet their immediate needs, then they would say, Well, I also have this other thing.

Or, This is happening at home, but it doesn't make sense to me.

You know, they say survivors are the last to know they're survivors.

They think the abuse that they've experienced is normal.

They've been gaslit to believe that they deserve it and it's their fault.

And so when you start building relationships with people and it's not, You need to leave him, it's, Let me talk about that with you.

What is a healthy relationship?

What is the definition of sex trafficking?

What-- you know, explain a little more.

You can go deeper with people and build relationship so they can make the choice to walk away if and when they're ready.

-But let's go back to you talking about how lucrative of an industry it is.

So there are people within this industry who cannot afford, though, to go to the dentist, for example.

So there are people making money.

There are people not making money.

There are sex trafficking victims.

There are sex workers who do it willingly.

-By choice, yep, absolutely.

-How do you rationalize all of that?

-Well, I think what we realized early on is it really-- we don't have to rationalize it.

Because for us, it isn't like, we're not making the distinction for them.

We're allowing them to uncover their experiences and their needs.

Sometimes for 63% of our clients, it was, Oh, my God, I'm being trafficked, and I had no idea.

And for the other percentage, it was-- -What did they think they were doing?

-Working off-- I mean, these are crazy stories.

Like oftentimes they have an attorney, they have a business that they're all working under and building cash, and then their managers are investing it.

And these are-- this is not like what people think it is.

This is domestic sex trafficking.

These are business people.

These are some, literally, the most strong and tenacious people you will ever meet, because they can go home and experience this like, gaslighting and this, the levels of emotional and mental abuse, which is mostly what it is.

And then they can go out and work and build that business because they want better.

We've heard stories like, I'm, you know, trying to make money so my mom can get brain surgery.

I'm trying to help my children.

I'm trying to, you know, like-- and as a mother, I'm like, I would do anything for my kids.

You know, like I, I don't have to put myself in their shoes to realize that, like, we're all human beings.

And so whatever it is they're doing the work for, there's no judgement.

I don't-- I respect people's choice of work, whatever it is.

And if they're not doing it with their consent and their agency, then I want to allow opportunity to help them realize that and provide resources.

-Couple questions to fit in before we run out of time.

So you were getting into these relationships via cupcakes and also makeup.

-Yeah.

-I understand cupcakes, because food is a connection.

-Yeah, totally.

-What is it about makeup?

-Well, what I learned as a hairstylist--because that's actually my background is that--when someone's sitting in your chair and you're present with them, there's a lot of opportunity for conversation.

And so really, that's what it was.

It was just, you know, sitting there.

It was like doing their eyelashes or doing their hair and then just talking, talking about their experiences or their day or their children, talking about bringing something up that happened and just bringing a listening ear and sometimes going, Well, you know, what about this perspective?

Have you thought of this?

And it's really deepening and building those relations.

I still have those relationships today.

Some of those women were the women who, you know, helped give baby showers for my kids.

Like I was going in pregnant, you know, so it really was a depth of connection that I will, I'll really never forget.

-Last question.

Would this product, this lipstick, would it have saved your mother-in-law?

-You know, it's hard to know that.

But we really believe that if she would have understood that she was experiencing domestic violence and that she did have agency to leave and, if not, she could have pushed a button sooner and the police could have arrived and known her location, could it have saved her or my brother-in-law?

I hope so.

And if not, I hope it saves the next person.

-Joy Hoover, thank you so much for joining Nevada Week In Person.

-Thank you for having me.