<p>Kyung Min Park ESL 220-004/Stahl Oct 13th, 2009 Persuasive Essay Draft 2</p><p>A Lighter Should Not Be a Sexist</p><p>Every night I put my pack of cigarettes on the desk before I sleep, replacing the old ones. Yes, those are cigarettes sitting on my desk. I still remember how I first got in touch with these cigarettes and how it has changed my viewpoints towards other smokers especially to girls from a bad image to a good image. </p><p>* * *</p><p>One sunny day in Vietnam, where my dogs were chasing butterflies outside in front of my yard, I was there sitting at the bench. In the hands of an eight years old girl, there was a pack of cigarettes. I wondered why people were smoking, including my dad and my guardian. As a girl in second grade, I have learned that smoking is bad and unhealthy to everyone, not only to smokers but also to everyone around them. I have seen many men smoke, but where are women who smoke? Neither my mom smokes nor my sister. Aren’t women allowed to smoke?</p><p>I asked my dad that night, why he have started to smoke. He replied, “When I got in to the military in Korea, there were upper class soldiers who forced and offered me a cigarette.” He told me that he could not reject the cigarettes they offered because as a lower soldier he had to respect the upper class soldiers. I understood his situation that he had to smoke, not wanting, but trying to respect; this was his first experience of smoking. </p><p>I always have asked and begged my dad to quit smoking because I was worried about his health. But when I calculated the age of my dad and the number of years he had</p><p>1 smoked, I realized that he actually smoked over ten years but still looked healthy. With the curiosity, with a young girl’s mind, I decided to try one cigarette. I used my dad’s lighter to light my cigarette; the lighter which spent one third of my dad’s life together, the lighter that traveled from places to places, from countries to countries. It was that moment when my mom caught the sight of her daughter smoking. I was preached for hours and hours from my mom, and my dad punished me harshly. I was told that girls and women should not smoke at all. </p><p>Why is that? Is there a need of excuses in order to smoke, such as boys offered from upper soldiers? What about girls, girls do not go to military. There are no such rules where men can smoke and women cannot. As I grew older, I got to see the world a lot wider; it was when I went back to Korea-- I could see more people smoking other than my dad and my guardian. Here I saw many men smoke in public areas: restaurants, cafés, and parks.</p><p>There are smoking areas in most of these public places, and café was the place where I first found a woman smoke. There were customers staring at her with cruel eyes just because she was a smoking woman and there was me staring at her too. She did not look different with any other women around her, but because everyone had told me girls should not smoke, I felt that she was doing something wrong. </p><p>Many non-smokers say, “Girls shouldn’t smoke because they will look disrespectful” or “those girls who smoke are probably the ones who are not educated well.” Because they said uneducated people, I thought smokers have friends who are gangsters until this one day, which made me to get over with these stereotypes.</p><p>During my senior year, I had some girls who had started smoking; one of them was my best friend. The moment when I saw them smoking gave me a shock, the scene of friends</p><p>2 smoking behind the school, made me worry whether I would lose my friends. This was the moment when I realized that girls can and do smoke, also showed me that smoking does not change one’s personality or one’s relationship among friends. Having my best friend to smoke, I have slowly felt less wariness against smokers and also to girls who smoke. Later on, being too open-minded with girls smoking, I have started also. I have realized one day, I was one of those people who buy packs of cigarettes from the store, but still have good relationships among friends.</p><p>People say smoking is bad because it is unhealthy. They say that girls shouldn’t smoke because girls will give birth to a child. Also, men say that girls should not smoke because we are just girls. If men tell women to stop smoking because they are unhealthy, why won’t men stop smoking too? In addition, if one female quits smoking couple years before giving birth, or having less amount of cigarette than males, smoking would not be a big problem. Finally, in my point of view, men and women are the same type of human being; there should be no sexists, those who compare men against women who smoke. I say smoking is not a sin, but a just one habit that one achieves from being addicted.</p><p>* * *</p><p>Today, my morning started again in my own sweet room, where I always get ready to go out. I woke up a bit late today than usual, but there still waits a pack of cigarettes on the desk, waiting for me to take it out and burn each ones up. </p><p>3</p>