The Beauty Trap

Before there was Mad Men, there was Jeanne Rejaunier’s The Beauty Trap, capturing the same Madison Avenue advertising world of the era, as seen through the eyes of three young models and their agents. Originally published in hardcover by Trident Press, a division of Simon and Schuster, in softcover by PocketBooks, and by Michael Joseph and New English Library in London, Author Rejaunier’s highly acclaimed novel traces the fortunes and misfortunes of Carrie, Dolores and Eve. As glamorous and successful models, they are seen on magazine covers, on runways, in catalogs, on billboards and TV commercials. So beautiful are these young women, they dare to dream of reaching the pinnacle in the fiercely competitive modeling profession. Each does achieve a large measure of success, but not without discovering she must pay a terrible price. For the ambitious model not only works – achingly, endlessly – she also finds herself abused, compromised, and marketed as a commodity. And in the jet set world of fashion shows, openings, discotheques, elegant New York townhouses, boutiques, yachts, and parties graced by international tycoons and Greek billionaires, she is degraded as a mere ornament by pleasure-seeking escorts. As one critic remarked, “The author captures perfectly the bitterness and insincerity of the career model’s round of cocktail parties, power lunches, and bedrooms.”

Jeanne Rejaunier was a model and actress in New York, Hollywood, London, Paris and Rome. She is the author of this sometimes shocking, but always readable novel that exposes the glamorous world of modeling for what it really is - a cynical and ruthless business, artificially sweetened by soulless sex.