Trump Modeling Agency

A day in the life of a Trump Modeling gig

The email started, “Miss Reeves, you’ve been selected as a model at the Trump Golf Resort in Westchester, NY. Arrive in hair and makeup at six a.m. in front of Trump Tower on Fifth Avenue. Transportation will be provided. Pay is $150 flat for the day.”

Wow. The Donald Trump Modeling Agency wanted me to be a model. I was so honored. Finally, all my hard work at being young and beautiful was paying off.

It was the summer of 2006. I had just turned twenty-one (again), and I lived in a fourth-floor walk-up in Hell’s Kitchen. I was working my way into the comedy world and booked odd jobs and modeling gigs to support myself. I wasn’t the type of model who rolled around in the sand in an invisible bikini for Sports Illustrated, and I blame my body for that. My modeling jobs were more like adding to the atmosphere with my charm and pleasant demeanor.

I didn’t know much about Donald Trump at the time other than he basically came with Manhattan, just like the Statue of Liberty and the Times Square Applebees.

I could barely sleep the night before because the image of a black stretch limo idling outside Trump Tower with a driver in white gloves waiting to let me in was almost too good to be true. And I secretly hoped someone had tipped off the paparazzi. 

I arrived at five fifty-five that morning because I don’t fuck around when fortune, fame, and my destiny are on the line. And I was the first to witness the Great Migration, in which forty other women joined me. We descended on Trump Tower from every direction as if it were a cultural mecca that called to us. We had been summoned. I walked from Forty-Seventh Street and Tenth Avenue from the west. Other women emerged from the subway, rounded corners, and were dropped off by taxis. I didn’t realize this would be a group thing. I wasn’t even sure what we were doing.

“Name?” A short man with slick, greased black hair holding a clipboard asked as he approached me.

“Lauren Reeves,” I said, “At your service.”

While the clipboard guy checked everyone in, I turned to a blonde German girl who looked like Heidi Klum’s even hotter sister.

“Do you know what we’re doing today?” I asked since the email didn’t have much information.

“No. But I know the New York Giants will be there, and I’m going to marry one,” she said. I was happy for her but also confused.

“You mean the football people?”

“Yes, the New York Giants, the football men. We are escorting them around the golf course,” she said.

I stepped closer and whispered, “Do you know if we get to drive the golf carts?” Because if we did, I’d need to be behind the wheel. Driving the golf cart is kind of my specialty. It’s even more fun after a few margaritas.

Before she could answer, the clipboard man made an announcement.

“Ladies, listen up!”

We all turned and gave him our full attention.

“I need all of you to stand in a single file line. That means one person next to the other. I’m talking shoulder to shoulder- not facing someone’s back. Mr. Trump will be down in five minutes. I repeat, five minutes!”

The man spoke to us like we weren’t smart enough to form a single line, but we figured it out with one minute to spare.

Forty women lined up on Fifth Avenue, waiting for the famous TV man with the golden toilet to come down and greet us.

“Chin up and chest out,” the man shouted, “and do not smile, please!”

Two men opened the doors to Trump Tower and out walked Donald. He looked different in person. He was a little taller than I expected, and I could tell his hair was made out of goose feathers. His skin looked like it had been pickled in a blood-orange liquid overnight. Trump didn’t greet or acknowledge the clipboard man, but Clippy followed behind Trump like an obedient dog on a leash as he walked down to the first model in line.

Trump looked her up and down and, after a quick body scan, nodded yes. He kept going down the line. “Yes, yes, good…” And when he got to the fifth girl, he called out, “No.”

No?

The man with the clipboard motioned for her to come forward. I read his lips from a distance. He asked for her name, crossed it out, and sent her home.

He did it again, a few women down from me.

I couldn’t believe what I was seeing. Donald Trump was getting rid of the women he didn’t think were hot enough for his golf course.

I was mortified. This was humiliating. They were being rejected by a man who looked like a jack-o-lantern that had been left on a porch until December 02. Now that hurts.

When Trump got to me, I looked him in the eyes as if to say, I dare you to send me home. But I knew I was probably safe since I looked like his daughter, Ivanka– if she’d been raised to build character by shoveling snow off a roof at forty below zero in the Alaskan wilderness.

Plus, I wanted and needed that one hundred fifty dollar check, which would have been equivalent to five hundred dollars back in those days.

“Keep,” Trump said as he cleared me.

Phew. I passed the beauty test for the day.

Trump sent ten girls home, where I’m sure they cried and comforted themselves with a box of donuts and questioned why they were trying to make it in an industry filled with rejection in a city that won’t kill you but just make you suffer, because that’s exactly what I would have done.

Trump turned to go back inside, and his toupee quickly followed. The rest of us looked around in disbelief. We boarded a bus and drove to Westchester.

“God, I would have died if that were me,” I said to an intimidating Russian model who sat next to me. “Well, he didn’t want the Giants to be scared,” she replied.

When we walked into Trump Golf Resort, we were each handed a bag from Nike with our names on it. Inside were mini white golf skirts and golf shoes in our sizes with treads on the bottom. The poor grass.

After everyone changed, we were instructed to split off into pairs of two. I quickly slid into the German girl’s bubble. We were assigned the eighth hole. We walked onto the course and stood at our positions.

The first players to come through were so big that they had no choice but to play professional football. The only other job they would’ve been good at was bouncing at a nightclub. An ESPN film crew was following them. Our job was to flirt with them and make them feel special, like clothed strippers. But I’m notoriously uninterested in flirting with men, and all I could think about was commandeering a golf cart.

I saw an opportunity to escape while the German girl giggled with the athletes. I spotted a girl sitting alone in a golf cart nearby, so I walked over to her and played the old trickeroo.

“Whoa, I think Payton Manning or Joe Namath or somebody just played through,” I said, displaying my entire knowledge of American football players.

The woman’s face perked up.

“Which hole are you at?” she asked.

“Eight, it’s like the party hole. I can’t believe you have to drive this stupid cart around all day,” I said, gently kicking the back wheel as if I were mad at it. “I would happily switch with you if you wanted to trade places for a bit.”

And just like that, it worked.

I spent the rest of the afternoon speeding through the course, picking up a few girls and taking them on joy rides. We handed out cigars and poured beers for the golfing football players, proving golf doesn’t have to be boring.

A cocktail reception and dinner followed. I found an empty seat next to Matthew Modine, the only football player I recognized. We ate and talked well into the night. All the pictures I have from this event are in black and white or faded. Color film hadn’t been invented yet.

With my favorite football player, Matthew Modine.

By eleven o’clock, I had met nearly every football player on the Giants, and we all drove back to the city in a party bus with several poles, black lights, and club music blasting. I was sure people would’ve killed to spend a day with them, but for me, it was just another day of life in Manhattan.

I'm certain these are football players too.

It was the first and last time I worked with the Trump Modeling Agency. I made the gig fun because that’s what I bring to the table. But I will never forget Donald Trump sending girls away he deemed not attractive enough to work for him. But if that’s how he wants to play, I can do that too. 

I’m voting for the hottest Presidential candidate and sending Trump home, humiliated.