Katniss Was Peeta’s First Kiss As Well, and I Will Die on This Hill.
This debate seems to have cooled off in recent years, but it used to be highly contentious. I have always been in the camp that Peeta was just as inexperienced as Katniss, though, and do believe the text supports this take in many instances.
First, the only words we ever get about other girls is that he “noticed” just about every one of them in District 12. Not uncommon in the slightest. He put them on temporary equal ground with Katniss, a girl he obviously hadn’t kissed prior to the games but was “the only one who left a lasting impression.” This clearly hints at how all the other notices were short-lived, perhaps not even fully internalized, and never amounted to anything because he was constantly weighing them against the permanent fixture that was Katniss Everdeen. The others gave him an impression that was merely fleeting within the confines of his mind and therefore deemed unworthy of perusing. And do we honestly believe a girl constantly within Peeta’s orbit and acting a certain way enough to be a potential recipient of his kisses would have escaped Katniss’s notice? She kept tabs on his social status to a tee, only reporting on him being a part of a large crowd and how his eyes remained consistently “trained” on her throughout the years (she only knew because her own were drawn to him for a totally undetermined reason as well).
Now, looking at their first kiss itself, his reaction had all the signs of a boy receiving his first one in general. The wordsmith was rendered mute after having just been fretting about verbally getting something off his chest, offering a simple “all right” to her insistence that he wasn’t going to die. She shut him up, and he just laid there in reverent silence. I suppose you could argue that it was simply because Katniss had been the one who just kissed him, but that just brings us back to my previous point. Why would he have wasted meaningless kisses if he clearly already knew a kiss from her would mean the world? And this is the same guy who had already been flirting up a storm and surely should have been able to bounce back after momentary shock over who the giver was if that wasn’t also his first kiss ever. But no, all he does is continue to be dumbfounded and give her puppy eyes when she returns to him. I just know he was thinking Katniss Everdeen was my first kiss.
The most used argument people conjure up is how he and the other victors rib her for being “so pure.” They even go a step further and believe this indicates he’d actually been fully intimate with one or several of the girls. But this is an example of how context is crucial. In both scenes Katniss’s pureness is teased about, it centers around nudity. Something we have to remember is that most people in this future society would be desensitized to nudity, as they have grown up watching an annual, televised event that does not censor it. In addition to Glimmer’s strategically see-through dress during her interview being fully documented, Peeta’s nudity in the first of the scenes I’m pulling from itself was not censored. So being indifferent toward Johanna’s nudity or showcasing his own in order to have an injury treated does not mean Peeta had had intimate experiences with said girls. He teases Katniss because she isn’t just uncomfortable with nakedness, she is - as he put it - downright “squeamish for such a lethal person.” It’s something she ran from whenever the opportunity to be desensitized to it arrived, which we can logically conclude included averting her gaze when nudity on screens throughout the years came up as well. Do you remember who Katniss believed would be less “pure” enough to handle seeing Peeta naked? Her twelve-year-old, little sister. And do we think Prim had had her first kiss? Exactly.
Lastly, Suzanne Collins made it a point to reveal that Gale had kissed - and most likely went further with - several girls before making his move on Katniss. I find it hard to believe she wouldn’t have made it crystal clear if Peeta had a similar history. Gale is two whole years older than Everlark, and so much more heightened levels of intimacy typically occurs within that gap. It is just as common, if not more, to come across a sixteen-year-old who hasn’t had their first kiss vs. one who has. And since Peeta and Gale are explicitly meant to contrast in most everything else, I again firmly believe Suzanne trusted us to pluck out that Peeta truly only had lasting eyes for the girl with the lovely voice. He reserved all his rizz for her, which was likely fully garnered by watching/listening to his older brothers’ own success stories with various girls.