PICK ME: The Performance of Desirability

By Salomé Noir

"PICK ME: The Performance of Desirability" is a powerful feminist critique that exposes the emotional and psychological costs of performing for male approval in a world that commodifies femininity. Salomé Noir takes readers on an eye-opening journey through the adult industry's hidden realities, unmasking the manipulation, exploitation, and emotional toll that women endure while being conditioned to be pleasing, profitable, and palatable. This book not only examines the trauma of self-objectification but also challenges the societal expectation that women must sacrifice their authenticity to survive. A bold declaration of self-empowerment, PICK ME is for every woman who has ever felt reduced to her desirability and struggled to reclaim her worth beyond the performance.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Nova Kaine Books
• Release date: Apr 11, 2025
• ISBN: 9798227473370

Salomé Noir

Salomé Noir is a feminist writer, cultural critic, and survivor of the illusion of empowerment. With brown skin, a bald head, and a voice that blends clarity with incantation, she writes as a woman who has lived the performance—and dismantled it from the inside out. For two years, Salomé worked in adult entertainment, from cam sites to phone lines, navigating seductive performance, emotional labor, and the transactional intimacy that defines the industry. She played the role: moaning on command, flirting for tips, performing desire. All while being told she was "empowered." Her voice rises from that contradiction—not as an outsider looking in, but as someone who learned the rhythm of being chosen and dared to stop dancing. Her debut, PICK ME: The Performance of Desirability, is both intimate memoir and cultural critique, exposing how girls are trained to be pleasing, palatable, and perpetually available—yet never fully themselves. Salomé writes for the woman who's tired of pretending, the performer who forgot where the character ends and her body begins. Her words confront patriarchy, capitalism, and the shame/pleasure split many women carry. But at its core, her work pulses with reclamation—of eroticism, identity, and boundaries. Her name, drawn from the vilified biblical Salomé and the shadowy depth of "noir," reflects her commitment to truth, mystery, and unapologetic honesty. Through her essays and stories, Salomé offers a mirror to every woman who's ever been made into a performance—and a path back to wholeness.

Book preview

To the woman reading this,

I want you to know I see you.

Not the polished version. Not the one who smiles at strangers and apologizes when someone else bumps into her. I mean you—the one with the quiet rage, the tired hope, the skin that remembers every time it was touched without consent. The one who has performed kindness like a job and mistook survival for love.

I wrote this for you.

I spent two years inside an industry that turns women into characters and our pain into content. I played the game, learned the roles, smiled through disgust, and let men pay pennies to peek into my soul. I did it for money. I did it because I thought I had to. I did it because no one ever told me I was enough unless I was giving something away.

Now I write what they never wanted to hear.

No more whispering. No more shrinking. No more shame.

This isn’t just my story.

It’s yours too.

Ours. Together.

​Let’s burn the fairytales. Let’s write something real.

​—Salomé Noir

––––––––

The First Lie I Ever Learned Was That I Had to Be Chosen

They told us we were born for love.

But it was never love. It was labor. A job we didn’t apply for, dressed up as destiny. Be pretty. Be polite. Be wanted. Be quiet. Spend your life auditioning for someone who doesn’t deserve you. Smile when you’re hurting. Say yes when you want to scream.

This series is not about making peace with that lie. It’s about burning it.

I wrote these books not as answers, but as mirrors. For every woman who’s been broken in half just to fit into a world that was never made for her. For every girl who learned that her body was currency and her silence was survival. For the ones who kept the secrets, swallowed the shame, and still showed up.

I don’t want to be picked anymore. I don’t want to be saved. I don’t want the version of love they promised me in movies but never gave me in real life.

What I want is truth.

Ugly, holy, bitter, electric truth.

That’s what this is.

Welcome to the fire.

—Salomé Noir

​Chapter One

Conditioned to Serve

I don’t remember the first time I realized I was supposed to be soft.

Not strong. Not sharp. Not loud. Soft.

It was probably long before I knew the word for it. Before I even knew what being a girl really meant. But I remember the feeling. I remember being six years old, told to sit like a lady, knees pressed tight together, back straight, hands folded neatly in my lap. I was a child—wriggly and curious, full of laughter that wanted to spill out. But even then, there was this invisible pressure, like a hand on the back of my neck, telling me to behave, to be small, to be pleasant.

That was the beginning of my training.

Girlhood, for many of us, is not a playground. It’s preparation. It's a quiet rehearsal for a performance we never agreed to. We’re taught how to speak without offending. How to smile without meaning it. How to accommodate others’ needs before understanding our own. We are fed praise when we’re easy to handle and punished when we show teeth.

We don’t call it submission. Not at first.

We call it being good.

But behind every good girl is a tired woman who’s forgotten what her own voice sounds like.

As we grow, this performance becomes more complex, more high-stakes. We start learning how to twist ourselves into versions that are more likable, more desirable, more chosen. And it’s all so casual, so normal, so socially reinforced that we don’t even realize how much of ourselves we’ve amputated just to be loved.

I was taught that being wanted was the highest honor a woman could achieve.

Not respected.

Not understood.

Not fulfilled.

Just wanted.

Because to be chosen meant you had value. And if no one picked you, well—then there must be something wrong with you.

This is the root of what I now call approval addiction. It’s not some clinical condition. It’s something more insidious. A slow starvation for validation. A quiet desperation to hear someone say, You are enough—even if it’s wrapped in manipulation, exploitation, or abuse.

I’ve watched women—brilliant, creative, spiritual women—contort themselves to please men who wouldn’t spit on them if they were on fire. I’ve been that woman. I’ve spoken gently when I wanted to scream. I’ve accepted crumbs and called it love. I’ve made myself pretty and pliable and agreeable, all in the name of being seen.

Because deep down, I believed my value only existed in someone else’s gaze.

It’s not our fault. It’s systemic. It’s ancestral. It’s everywhere.

We are groomed to prioritize male comfort from childhood:

Don’t interrupt him.

Don’t emasculate him.

Don’t dress like that—you don’t want to give him the wrong idea.

Boys will be boys.

He hit you because he likes you.

The messaging is clear: Keep him happy, or you’ll be alone.

So we work harder. Talk softer. Sacrifice more. Smile wider.

And then, one day, we wake up exhausted. Bitter. Empty.

We wonder why we feel like ghosts in our own lives.

And the answer is simple.

We’ve spent so long trying to be picked that we never stopped to ask if we were doing the choosing.

We don’t choose.

We wait to be chosen.

In dating. In jobs. In friendships. In sex work.