LogFAQs > #978630675

Count_Drachma posted...

If most people can have something AND everybody can have it at the same time, it's not much of a status symbol.

That too. All of this "you can't buy/steal/be given fitness" rambling actually demonstrates why fitness is a very poor status symbol: It doesn't actually indicate anything about any status other than itself. As the name suggests, status symbolize symbolize status. Seeing somebody display one allows you to make inferences about various aspects of their status (usually socioeconomic, the way the term is typically used). In the case of fitness, though, the only thing you can infer from seeing a physically fit person is "that person is physically active," which makes it quite useless as a status symbol in the broader sense (and therefore very much not "the ultimate one").