To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before…

Aritzia dress (similar)
Diego’s sandals (similar)
Vintage bag (similar)
RayBan sunglasses
Keltie Leanne Designs ring (c/o)
Urban Outfitters earrings (similar)
Location: Manitoba Legislative Building – Winnipeg, Manitoba

…is probably the best teen movie in the past two decades. But half the writers on the internet have already found their own way of telling you why Peter Kavinsky is the ideal male heartthrob. In a matter of weeks, his name has become ubiquitous. And, while I agree it was a pleasant surprise to see a male any character in a movie made in 2018 with more than marginal amount of dimension and depth, Peter Kavinsky is utterly beside the point. To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before is a story about a girl named Lara Jean Covey. And a story about the way that, especially as teenagers, the people we fall for are a reflection of how we perceive ourselves.

“We accept the love we think we deserve.” – Stephen Chbosky

When I was seventeen, I wrote a series of letters. They were addressed to the boys I had known intimately up to that point. The boys I had loved. But they were not love letters. My outlook on romantic love at seventeen was less than optimistic. Bleak might be the best word to describe it. Cynical would be appropriate, too. In ninth grade, a male classmate asked me out. I agreed largely because we spent every hour of every school day together. I couldn’t bring myself to face all of those hours for all of the remaining months of the year if I refused him. He would make my life miserable, and I knew it. What I didn’t know was that he would ultimately make me miserable no matter which path I chose.

We dated for two months. He broke up with me. And then he proceeded to engage in a pattern of emotional abuse that included threatening suicide if I didn’t behave in the way he wanted for the next two years. I blamed myself for everything that happened between us for far longer.

My letters were angry. I had grown up on a steady diet of movies like All the Boys I’ve Loved Before, movies that presented relationships as a balm that would soothe all of my angst. The reality of the relationships I experienced was a stark contrast to their milquetoast happily ever afters. Where the characters I loved got the perfect kiss, there were only tears, mispelled letters shoved into my mailbox and awkward avoidance in the school hallway for me. The betrayal was acute. So I wrote it out. Every letter ended the same way: “I don’t expect you to know what to do with this. I just thought you should know.” As I wrote, I realised that I had been doing what Stephen Chbosky described so tragically in The Perks of Being a Wallflower – I accepted the kind of love I believed I deserved.

At seventeen, I asked myself, “What is wrong with me?” at least twenty-two times a day. I believed, genuinely, that something was – and so I chose, subconsciously, to spend my time with people who felt the same. The movies didn’t help, but they weren’t exactly to blame, either. Still, it would have been nice – it would still be nice, just once, to see a movie that isn’t about all the boys a girl has loved. Someday, I hope, someone makes a movie about a girl who learns that the person who deserves her love most is herself. My letters made me no friends. They certainly didn’t result in romance. In fact, at least one of them lead to an angry phone call. But they taught me that.