Bretman Rock dreamed of being a ‘sex symbol’ before that historic Playboy cover: ‘I f*****g can do anything’

It Figures is Yahoo Life's body image series, delving into the journeys of influential and inspiring figures as they explore what body confidence, body neutrality and self-love mean to them.

Since launching to stardom with his memorable YouTube makeup tutorials, and becoming the first gay man to grace the cover of Playboy, Bretman Rock has become a titan in the online beauty industry.

But despite the fact that he boasts nearly 9 million subscribers on YouTube, over 18 million on Instagram and 14 million on TikTok, the makeup influencer, 24, can’t quite fathom just how influential he is.

“When I first started [doing makeup tutorials], I could probably count with one hand how many boys, especially boys around my age, that were making makeup content,” Rock tells Yahoo Life. “Now I meet so many gay boys with a full face of makeup on, even younger than when I started, like 10-year-olds blending better than I have ever blended in my whole entire life, who come up to me and I'm like, ‘What? How did you even get the money to buy this makeup?’”

Rock, who immigrated from the Philippines to Hawaii as a child, says he recognized society’s unjust beauty standards early on when he moved to America. By that point, he’d already come out as gay to his family and friends — which, he says, “didn’t come as a surprise.”

“It wasn't until I came to America that I started to kind of realize that, like, oh my gosh, like, there is a beauty standard, there is an attention to what you are, sexually, because I was being asked if I was gay when I was in second grade, like, on my first day of school. I'm like, oh my god, nobody gives a f*** about this s*** back home," he recalls.

His mindset took a 180 when, one morning, “I woke up and decided that I am a beauty standard on my own,” he recalls. “I'm not gonna fit the white boy beauty standard [so] I might as well make my own lane and be my most beautiful version of myself.”

“I've always been a very skinny kid,” says Rock, who last year packed on muscles ahead of his historic Playboy cover. “As I got older, I just grew into Bretman Rock, like, my body, because fitness and health has always been a part of my life. It never made sense to me why people think I just woke up one day and started lifting weights.”

It was the people in his life — especially his grandmother — who encouraged him never to seek validation from others, but rather, from within.

“I never had to tell myself that I was beautiful because my grandma did," he explains. "She always introduced me to people and was like, ‘This is my grandson. He's so beautiful.'"

Rock still brings that level of confidence into the projects he chooses — including his new series with global shopping service Klarna, which follows the influencer as he is tasked with creating the company's new jingle in just 48 hours.

His journey from makeup artist to a Playboy cover star was quite serendipitous.

“I wanted to be a sex symbol,” he says of his teenage dreams. Ultimately, “everything just kind of aligned” when he ran into the head of casting at Playboy at a sushi restaurant, who would eventually later think of Rock when deciding to do a special digital cover. (The magazine ceased print covers in 2020.)

“Just the idea that this woman I’d just met from eating sushi fell in love with me and loved our interaction enough to put me on the cover, that is where my confidence stemmed from,” he explains of the shoot, which had him donning the signature bunny ears while wearing a black corset. “It really made me feel like I f******g could do anything, and I can manifest anything.”

Since Rock broke into the industry, a slew of other makeup influencers have followed — many of them gay men of color, such as Patrick Starrr, Manny MUA and Mac Daddy. Still, Rock remains humble.

“I don't think role models know they are role models, honestly, because when I meet people that I look up to so much and I tell them how much I adore them and how much they mean to me, they're always like, ‘Oh my god, really?” he says. “And so that's kind of how I am too. I don't think I am [a role model], until another brown kid is like, ‘Oh my god, I came out because of you.’”

That doesn’t mean he doesn’t get his fair share of criticism. But even then, he chooses to wrap himself in a “gratitude blanket,” which helps to keep the bad thoughts away.

“Even though I come across as such a bad bitch online, and like, you know, nobody can f*** with me, and I do come across very confident, I absorb a lot of energy,” explains Rock, who's been open in the past about his struggle with anxiety. “Sometimes, [online trolling] does affect me in a lot of ways.

“The practice that I do all the time to keep me grounded, and to keep me sane, is to just practice gratitude,” he continues. “Sometimes I just have to realize that like, bitch, when you were in high school you would have been killing for these opportunities. This is what you wanted, Bretman. It's really just thinking about how far I came, and how far I have to go.”

He certainly has much further to go, and with an attitude like his, the sky's the limit.

When asked about his philosophy on life, he quips, “The two most important things in life are to be nice to everybody. And file your taxes.”

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