The Beauty Trap

The original version of the bestselling novel about the grime beneath the glitter in the modeling industry became a cult classic, selling more than one million copies. The Beauty Trap was the first of its kind, a story that chronicles the lives of three beautiful young women in the heady, fast paced New York fashion and commercial modeling world, in a book whose theme is the penalty of beauty.

The Beauty Trap, a revised reissue of the widely publicized international bestseller by Jeanne Rejaunier, tells the inside story of the modeling industry, the beautiful faces, the fabulous bodies and how they are used by their agents, their clients, and their lovers. Rejaunier, a former model herself, strips away the dazzling clothes and false eyelashes to reveal the grime behind the glitter.

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 beautiful young models and their hard working agents. Originally published in hardcover by Trident Press, a division of Simon and Schuster, in softcover by PocketBooks, by Michael Joseph and New English Library in London, in Japan as well as several other European and Latin American countries, 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.

Jeanne Rejaunier graduated from Vassar College, Poughkeepsie, New York, and did postgraduate studies at the Sorbonne, Paris, the Universities of Florence and Pisa, Italy, the Goetheschule, Rome, and at UCLA. While a student at Vassar, she began a career as a professional model, and subsequently became an actress in Manhattan, Hollywood and Europe, appearing on and off Broadway, in films and television, on magazine covers internationally and as the principal in dozens of network television commercials.

Jeanne achieved international success with the publication of her first novel, The Beauty Trap, which sold over one million copies and became Simon and Schuster's fourth best seller of the year, the film rights to which were purchased outright by Avco-Embassy. Jeanne has publicized her books in national and international tours on three continents in five languages. Her writing has been extolled in feature stories in Life, Playboy, Mademoiselle, BusinessWeek, Fashion Weekly, Women's Wear, W, American Homemaker, Parade, the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, and countless other publications.

Branching out as a filmmaker, Jeanne produced, directed, filmed, and edited the four hour documentary, The Spirit of '56: Meetings with Remarkable Women.