Welcome to the all-new Girls’ Life! What you are holding in your hands is the culmination of a lot of deep thoughts, hard work...and more than a few debates. First, we had to ask ourselves one really important question: In 2016, do we even need magazines anymore? “Yes,” quipped one GL girl, “magazines are what you read when you don’t have the Internet.” Whomp. But as much as that kills anyone who still loves print (aka me) to hear, it’s also kind of true.

There is SO much RIGHT THERE on sites, blogs, Snapchat, Twitter, Tumblr, Insta, Facebook, YouTube, Vine, Periscope, Pinterest...and on and on and on. Do you really need one more way to look at stuff?

After months of talking it out with GL girls around the country, the answer is yes.

Sure, filtered images, 10-second videos and 140 characters are great, but girls told us there’s still nothing quite like coming home from school and seeing a new issue waiting in the mailbox. You just don’t get that feeling of anticipation staring at stuff on your phone. With digital, it’s all just...right there. With magazines, there’s always a surprise inside.

And that’s why we decided to rethink everything about Girls’ Life. Not that we didn’t see GL as fresh and fun—but it was time to take things up a notch. To reinvent ourselves again so we are always surprising you with something interesting to look at, something inspiring to read.

Rest assured that everything you always loved about GL is still here, but we’ve really packed every page of the new Girls’ Life with something we think is super special, something you just won’t find anywhere else (err, humbly speaking).

After all the convos, when I sat back and really thought about it, I realized Girls’ Life has been, and hopefully always will be, its own thing. A magazine, by nature, is disposable, but I constantly hear from girls who have saved their GLs and can instantly recall which cover was their first (shout-out to reader Borana G., who reminisced about the Alexis Bledel issue when we had lunch last month). Girls’ Life has always somehow remained current (this month we’re loving white eyeliner) and classic (we’ve got answers to your weirdest boob Qs!).

So is it like that old saying, where the more things change, the more they stay the same? Not exactly. We’ve definitely changed, but we’re still Girls’ Life—just with tons of new surprises inside. Here we go...

xoxo KB