Are you telling me if you see someone in great shape running and someone morbidly obese in a scooter, your reaction to both will be the same? Maybe I am cynical but I don't believe that.
every human being deserves the same respect and love regardless of their appearance, and making any difference is something that i deeply reject, and i feel ashamed if i catch myself with such a thought.
Or, if you're actually complaining about people getting any respect at all for the work they put into their physical appearance?
if my friends compliment me for the hard work i did as they notice the improvement, then that's fine.
but a random stranger has no business judging my appearance, regardless if it's positive or negative.
Where does the comment you responded to even talk about random strangers?
> and the amount of respect I got after less than a year of diligent weight lifting was incredible
Sounds to me like this is mostly about friends or acquaintances. All you're doing here is trying to invalidate something someone else did that they feel somewhat proud about.
it was also not my intention to invalidate the achievement of someone improving their bodyshape, which, as someone who is overweight myself, is something i wish i could achieve too (although i am somewhat proud of the fact that i kept my weight stable for the last 20 years) and i appreciate your criticism as i realize that my comment can be read like that.
i'd like to apologize for that.
what rubbed me wrong was the implied suggestion that i should improve my body in order to get more respect from friends or anyone else.
it felt to me like doing it for the wrong reasons. again, while saying that i realize that this may not be what the comment intended to express, and i am saying this now not in order to restate or repeat any criticism on my part, but in order to explain my thought process however inadequate it may be.
finally, my comment was not meant critisize the parent at all personally but rather critisize the very idea of respecting someone for their body shape.
maybe it helps to reverse the positions:
it is fine for me to compliment my friends on their achivements to loose weight because i know where they came from, but it is not acceptable to judge someone elses appearance because i don't know how it will be perceived. especially if it happens in public, congratulating someone on their body while not doing that on the nearby overweight person potentially makes that person uncomfortable.
likewise, receiving a compliment that i don't deserve makes me uncomfortable too.
we do need to consider how our messages are received. and with someone i don't know, i can't predict how that message is received, therefore it is better not to send the messsge in the first place.
if i do want to send a message i try to word it in such a way as to not be about them but about me: i would like to get my body in a shape like yours this removes any potential misunderstanding that i might generally favor people with a certain body shape, and it won't make other overweight people in the room feel bad.
so i am doing this with the express goal to counteract how other people are reacting to me or to anyone else.
And you'd be wrong, because it's extremely hypocritical. I too grew up a nerd. I got very in shape in my 40s, and the amount of respect I got after less than a year of diligent weight lifting was incredible -- and that was from people who would praise the feminized society, too.
> I can't understand a world where it is normal to have a bar fights.
I have to say, it has to be a very American thing. I remember two American guys telling me they were surprised to never see a bar fight in Paris, and I was shocked to hear such a thing existed. I thought it was a Western movie trope, 19th century frontier thing. But apparently not.