Yahoo Lifestyle Women's Health Turns 20 In 2025. What Would You Tell Your Younger Self?
In April of 2005, we launched our first-ever official print issue into a world that looks very different from today’s. A few months earlier, George W. Bush was sworn in for his second presidential term. The iPod Nano is about to be released, and Hurricane Katrina is four months away from barreling into Louisiana. The terms GLP-1 and Apple Watch aren’t in regular circulation, and talking about topics like postpartum depression, eating disorders, and “my therapist” will get you funny looks. It has been only 12 years since a law finally mandated that women be included in clinical trials and 11 years since the FDA created its Office of Women’s Health.
Our very first cover offers some directives we’ve long since retired, like “Easy Ways to a Flat Belly!” and “Tight ABS! Toned ARMS! Trim THIGHS!” But it includes others we still deeply believe in—stories that help women live their happiest, healthiest lives by providing essential service on how you can “Power Up Your Diet,” explore the “Secrets to Amazing Sex,” and get stronger with “New Weight Workouts.” Like you, we’ve evolved.
In the first editor’s letter, executive editor Kristina M. Johnson explains the engine that she hopes will drive WH. “The truth about smart, successful women’s lives, as we all know, is that they’re always slipping out of balance in one way or another,” she writes. “It’s easy to lose sight of the important things—your health, your peace of mind, your friends and family, and your dreams. That’s where Women’s Health comes in. We want to help you keep growing every day, to strive to live the life that you consider perfect.”
This mission still drives editorial decisions today. When reflecting on what has changed in women’s health care over the past decades, nearly all of the WH advisors interviewed for this feature pointed to the same big achievements: better representation—in the doctor’s office, research, treatments and diagnoses, pain management protocols—and more information.
Past, Present, And Future
Catching Up With Our First Cover Star
Charting Our Own Strength Transformation
Predicting The Future: The Next 20 Years
In 2007, female ob-gyns represented half of all doctors in the specialty, says WH advisor Jessica Shepherd, MD, an ob-gyn, author, and menopause expert. (That stat now lands at more than 85 percent.) We’ve developed beauty products that work for a variety of skin tones. “It was very limited 20 years ago,” says Mona Gohara, MD, a dermatologist and WH advisor. Society and medical professionals listen better to women’s pain, even if we still aren’t where we need to be. We’ve busted stigmas around menopause, periods, postpartum depression, and more. We’ve learned that lifting heavy isn’t just for gym bros.
It hasn’t been all sunshine and dumbbells, though. In the past few years, there’s been a seismic shift in reproductive-health rights as well as declining trust in our medical systems. But through it all, WH has been there, answering your questions and helping you find the light even when it felt dark. That’s why we do what we do. “The women that read Women’s Health, they’re looking for solutions,” says Gabrielle Lyon, DO, a functional medicine practitioner and WH advisor.
In a lot of ways, we’ve grown up together. We’ve failed and gotten back up. We’ve asked big questions. We’ve faced hard truths. We’ve started over, again and again and again. And as Johnson put it in her closing note to readers in that very first issue, “We plan on being here for you for a long, long time.”
Photographed by Chelsie Craig Prop Styling by Allison Ritchie
This story appears in the Spring 2025 issue of Women's Health.
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