Did you fall in love with Peter Kavinsky? Here’s why you shouldn’t have.
1. He starts a relationship by wanting to make another girl jealous
After receiving a letter in which a female expresses her undying love for him in the 7th grade, Peter proceeds to use this information to his advantage. He proposes the idea of creating a fake relationship in order to make his ex girlfriend jealous enough to want him back. Sounds perfect… right? WRONG! Ladies, if a man wants to use you for anything other than loving you and cherishing you, then he is not a man you want to be with.
2. He gives his ex girlfriend his current girlfriend’s scrunchie
At this point, it’s more than obvious that Peter has feelings for Lara Jean, so why would he give his ex girlfriend, and Lara Jean’s enemy, the ammunition she needs to get under Lara Jean’s skin? Why would anyone give their ex girlfriend one of their current girlfriend’s belongings in general, let alone one of her favorite items? Exes are a sticky situation to be dealing with, and if your man is still talking to, hanging around, and entertaining their ex, do you really want to be with him?
Photo courtesy of Teen Vogue
3. He lets his boys think he went farther with Lara Jean then he really did
Here is a prime example of the teen boy jock culture. It’s also a prime example of double standards regarding sex among male and female teens. When a video gets leaked of both Peter and Lara Jean kissing in a hot tub, it’s immediately assumed that the two had sex, and their males peers cheer and praise Peter while the females snicker and sneer at Lara. Peter is completely aware of why he is being praised while Lara is oblivious, but does Peter do anything about this? No, he doesn’t do anything until he’s confronted about his actions by Lara. Until then, he allows all of his friends to believe he’s the man because he got lucky in a hot tub. How often do we see this happen in our everyday lives? Too often. Is this behavior something that really attracts us? If not, why do we find Peter to be so attractive?
Photo courtesy of Hearstapps.com
4. He doesn’t lie, but he doesn’t necessarily tell the truth either.
Here’s the part of the movie that should have you screaming “OH HELL NO,” but instead has every female going “AWWW.” Peter, after having confessed his interest in Lara and the two getting hot and heavy in a hotel hot tub, retreats to his ex girlfriends room to supposedly “break things off.” While he may have done the right thing, why didn’t he do this sooner? If he knew well before that he had any interest in Lara like he expressed, shouldn’t he have broke it off with his ex long before he told Lara he wanted to be all in with her? I would think so. Also, if this meeting with his ex girlfriend was so innocent, then why did Lara Jean have to hear about from someone other than Peter (aka her boyfriend)? If you find out your boyfriend is in a hotel room with their ex girlfriend at night, where does your mind immediately go to? You think you were cheated on, and there’s no way for you to ever know for sure. Now while you should be able to trust your boyfriend, it’d be a lot easier to trust him if he’d told you about it when it happened, rather than hearing about it from his ex.
Gif courtesy of Clevver.com
We, as an audience, watched this movie with adoration for Peter, hoping we too would find a man just like him. We watched in awe as he fell in love, began to care for Lara, and portrayed the perfect boyfriend- but did he really? Would the perfect boyfriend do any of these things? I’d hope not, so he probably is not the perfect boyfriend. So why did we become so infatuated with this character? Why were we blind to all these red flags? Most importantly, why did we also fall in love with Peter Kavinsky? I’m sure you can answer this yourself, but I’m going to answer it for you. It wasn’t the character we fell in love with, it was the actor. We were blinded by a pretty face, and chose to let all potentially hurtful things he did slip under the rug. This leaves us asking ourselves, if Peter Kavinsky was not a handsome heartthrob would we have let him get away with the things he did? Would we still be obsessed with him if he wasn’t?