With January rearing its chilly head, snow seems less like a quaint relic of the holidays and more like a mortal enemy to avoid at all costs.
The extra wind chill does mega damage to your lips, leading to a reptilian look if left untreated. So if you want a healthy pair of fleshy mouth flaps, lip balm is your best winter friend.
Luckily lip chap is cheap, sold almost everywhere, and fits easily in a pocket. Not all lip balms are created equal, however. As a self-proclaimed lip-care fanatic, I carry a tube with me wherever I go and have tried my fair share of products, so please learn from my mistakes. Here’s a roundup of some lip chaps I’ve tried.
Nivea Pure and Nature—Milk and Honey
This stuff goes on quite smoothly and leaves your lips feeling great for hours. The pleasant scent is very light and hard to identify, but not so delicious that you end up licking most of it off.
Burt’s Bees Replenishing Lip Balm with Pomegranate Oil
My absolute favourite. This stuff goes on so smoothly and seems to last forever. I’ve owned the same tube for close to five years and it is still my go-to.
Burt’s Bees Lip Shimmer—Apricot
If you dig some lip rejuvenation and adding a playful hint of colour, Burt has got your back. It’s a great solution to the age-old problem of frequent lipstick use drying out your precious puckers. I also highly recommend cherry and rhubarb. It should be noted that this refers to colour—as far as I can tell, these are flavourless.
ChapStick—Spearmint
A classic, but it’s awful. It usually leaves my lips feeling even drier, and I will never understand mint-flavoured lip products. Why would you want your lips to burn and tingle for eons when you can use a different product that smells like pomegranate?
Eos—Honeydew
These colourful bad boys are fairly cheap and make a cute desktop accessory. That is where my compliments end. My apologies to those who are brand faithful to these rubbery orbs, but they go on with lots of clumps, do diddlysquat for my lips and can be awkward to apply.
Life Sunthera3—SPF 30
Look, I get the importance of protecting yourself from harmful rays. Sunburn on your lips is no fun. But I sincerely doubt I’ll ever find a worse tasting balm. Considering how inevitable it is to get lip chap in your mouth, this stuff is amazingly awful tasting. It does go on nicely and keeps your lips protected, though. So like Buckley’s, it tastes awful, but it works.
