When I was in fifth grade, I aced the Presidential Fitness Test. Not because I was some athletic prodigy — I was a large child who’d later become a big man — but because we had a pull-up bar at home. My parents had installed it in a doorway, and like my 5-year-old daughter today, I’d been doing dead hangs since before I could walk. When test day came, I knocked out pull-ups even as some skinnier children struggled. I held my own on the run. I bent far past my toes. None of this seemed remarkable to me. It was just what you did, growing up on the farm and playing and working outdoors.

Last month, President Donald Trump signed an executive order bringing back the Presidential Fitness Test, and the internet immediately erupted with outrage. People shared stories about childhood trauma, about crying in gym class, about how the test ruined exercise for them forever. They describe hanging helplessly from the pull-up bar while classmates watched. Some call it body shaming. Instead of acknowledging their flaws and getting stronger, these people have amplified the discourse around past or present weakness.