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Ever since welcoming his daughter Everly with wife Jenna Dewan-Tatum, Channing Tatum has been very protective and secretive about his little girl.
While he has opened up a little about fatherhood, nothing has been as open or emotional than the letter the 37-year-old wrote for his daughter in Cosmopolitan magazine. The publication initially requested Tatum to write a piece in honor of the opening of his Magic Mike Live in Las Vegas show, but he decided to write something more meaningful.
“The more I thought about this, the more I thought about my daughter reading this article someday,” Channing explained. “I pictured her in her late teens or early 20s, hoping to explore and discover her sexuality and dreaming about finding true love.”
“I tried to imagine the things I’d want her to read that would help her understand men and sex and partnership better, and at that moment, I realized a strange thing. I don’t want her looking to the outside world for answers. My highest hope for her is just that she has the fearlessness to always be her authentic self, no matter what she thinks men want her to be.”
He added that his hopes for her fearlessness stems from what he has learned from his wife Jenna.
“That radical authenticity of hers was what made me fall head over heels in love,” he admitted. “And that’s what I want for my daughter—to be expectation-less with her love and not allow preconceived standards to affect her, to ask herself what she wants and feel empowered enough to act on it.”
His letter continued, “When more women start to truly feel this power in themselves, the world will become so magical, it makes my head hurt,” he said. “We live in a society that has trained men and women to play certain kinds of roles for a long time, and the beauty of this amazing moment we’re living in is that we’re finally starting to break free from those roles. Women, especially, are realizing that they no longer have to conform to certain standards of social and sexual behavior, and this changes what they need from men and the role of men in general.”
Tatum then explained that those reasons are exactly why he decided to put together Magic Mike Live in Las Vegas.
“I wanted to create a space where we could really explore these themes in a fun, provocative way,” he continued. “I want women to feel what it’s like to exist in a world where men really listen to them, where they treat them like goddesses and where they can feel comfortable and proud to express the full force of their sexual energy together. I want them to experience a place where they are much more than enough.”