VIOLA, VIOLA, VIOLA Looks Stunning in Essence Mag!

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Viola Davis in Essence: Finding Hubby Was a Prayer Answered and talks about wearing her natural hair.

*In the October issue of Essence, cover girl Viola Davis says she prayed for a certain type of man to come into her life – and just like that, he appeared.

“I asked for a husband who was emotionally available, someone who was older, someone who maybe had a family before,” she says. “I like older men. Someone from the South. Someone who loves God more than he loves himself.”

Next thing you know…

“I met my husband three and a half weeks later, an ex-football player from Austin, Texas,” says Davis, 48. “On one our first dates, he took me to church.”

Davis and actor Julius Tennon were married in 2003. They adopted a daughter, Genesis, in 2011.

Davis has spoken before about how her husband has encouraged her not to wear her wigs outside her professional life – and says now that taking off the wig is a powerful act.

“I had to defend myself as an artist, but I found myself defending myself as a dark-skinned black woman in front of people who did not know my life,” she says. “I took my wig off because I no longer wanted to apologize for who I am.”

She also chats about a woman’s worth–especially when it comes to her hair. The 48-year-old Oscar nominated actress explained:

There’s not one woman in America who does not care about her hair. But we give it way too much value. We deprive ourselves of things, we use it to destroy each other, we’ll look at a child and judge a mother and her sense of motherhood by the way the child’s hair looks. I am not going to traumatize my child about her hair. I want her to love her hair.

She continued:

My image of myself {as a youth] was in the mouths of young White kids calling me…ugly…and then going home to a mother who did not fully embrace her own beauty.

This edition of Essence is on newsstands now!