Bretman Rock becomes first openly gay male to star on ‘Playboy’ cover

SAN FRANCISCO, Calif. (KRON) – Bretman Rock is breaking boundaries in the ‘Playboy’ world.

For the October 2021 digital issue, Rock appeared as the first openly gay male to be on the cover.

Rock took to Twitter on Friday saying, “I’m a @playboy bunny 🐰 DUHHHHHH,” and received thousands of likes.

Rock is a 23-year-old Filipino beauty influencer with nearly 9-million subscribers on YouTube.

Playboy introduced the social media personality wearing the famous Playboy Bunny Suit for the issue and wrote:

“Although he isn’t the first male-identifying star to wear the suit, he’s in good company: Steve Martin, Ezra Miller, Paul Rudd, Johnny Carson, Burt Reynolds, and Flip Wilson have all borrowed elements of the trademarked costume, some even going as far as to wear the full suit.”

The magazine released the photos of Rock but says more content will be coming soon, including behind-the-scenes videos from on set with photographer Brian Ziff.

Playboy quoted Rock on their Instagram saying, “For Playboy to have a male on the cover is a huge deal for the LGBT community, for my brown people community, and it’s all so surreal.”

While Playboy made history with this issue, not all of the responses were positive.

On Monday, Playboy responded to the backlash in a Twitter thread saying:

“Last week, we released our first-ever cover with an openly gay model, @bretmanrock. Since posting, we’ve received a lot of great comments, but far too many offensive ones as well.

These are the same kind of comments Playboy received when we put Darine Stern, an African American woman, on the cover in 1971, when we featured transgender model Tula Cossey in 1991 and when we fought for abortion rights before Roe v. Wade and cannabis law reform in the 1970s.

Standing for freedom and equality is in the DNA of this brand. Today, Playboy is much more than a magazine. Our digital covers are creative snapshots that drive and reflect the current dialogue around pleasure, sexuality, equality and culture.

If a gay man feels sexy in a bunny costume, an iconic symbol of sexiness, why shouldn’t he be able to wear it proudly?

Serving as a platform for representation and freedom of expression is and will always be what Playboy stands for.”