Why are soaps so drying even though they are mostly made up of oils?
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Soap is made from oil that’s been chemically modified so it can dissolve in water. The oils on whatever object you’re cleaning dissolve into the soap, and then it carries them into the water and away from the object.
It’s possible to make soaps less drying, but that makes them weaker cleansers too. I use a bath soap made from beef tallow (which makes relatively mild soap) where 8% of the fat wasn’t modified to make it dissolve. It hardly dries out my skin at all. But it wouldn’t be very good for cleaning oil off of dishes.
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