Proceed With Caution: This Surprising Solution for Super Dry Skin May Save Your Face This Winter

As Southern Living's style editor, I spend a lot of time asking women from across the South about their closet staples, fashion inspirations, and can't-live-without-them beauty finds. Often, their old-faithful beauty products aren't too surprising. Based on anecdotal evidence from these conversations, I'm convinced that OPI Cajun Shrimp and Clinique's yellow lotion are vanity mainstays in 70 percent of Southern households. But every now and then, someone will share a beauty secret that catches me totally by surprise.

In one of these recent conversations, I asked a young artist and mother from North Carolina about her own beauty routine. "I don't really have a beauty routine. I'm practical," she told me. "I do have really dry skin, but if you put Aquaphor Baby on your face and go to sleep (make sure you wear a headband, so it doesn't get in your hair), you wake up glowing. It's incredible."

"Aquaphor?" I asked, incredulous.

Don't get me wrong. I love Aquaphor. Aquaphor Lip Repair has saved my chapped lips on more than one occasion, and in the winter, a tube of the stuff splits its time between my vanity and my work tote. But it's hard to imagine slathering my face in the even thicker Aquaphor Baby ointment.

And then she hit me with this: "You wake up and look like you've had Botox."

The thought of Botox-like results without the expense, needles, or semi-permanent effects was almost appealing enough to warrant a CVS stop on the way home from work. But then she emphasized an earlier (and most crucial) note that I'd glossed over the first time she mentioned it: "I have really dry skin, so if you're the teeniest bit oily, it may be a bad idea."

Ah, there's the caveat.

My skin does not fall into the super-dry category, so I probably won't test the Aquaphor Baby facial myself. But if your skin is feeling especially dry this season, give this inexpensive, ultra-moisturizing solution a try. And if you wake up looking 10 years younger, don't boast too loudly. We envious oily-skinned gals will be over here trying to figure out a wrinkle-smoothing, age-defying hack that works for us.

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