While we’re on the topic, on the last year, NPR interviewed an expert who warned of lifelong debilitating injury (pain walking) that dancers developed by going en pointe too young. The woman recommended waiting until 15. But searching for this to share with dancers, I cannot find the interview now. Did NPR retract this?
While growth plates close at this time (~13-15), in preprofessional training it's more usual to start from about 12. Basically,one's feet need to be strong enough to protect growing bones from permanent damage, thus safely starting pointework has more to do with having enough strength from previous training (2+ years) than fully closed growth plates. For more information: https://www.ortho.wustl.edu/content/Patient-Care/3496/Servic...
Yep, that’s what happened to my wife… she started rhythmic gymnastic and ballet at 4 in Eastern Europe in the 90s with a brutal coach, had to stop at 12 for an injury, and she has been having chronic pain and arthritis since she was 17. Anything taken to the extreme can have lifelong consequences.
Reminder that coach is not your friend, the incentives are wrong. If they burn through 100 kids damaging them for life, and one survives to win an Olympic medal, that’s what counts as success.
I don't recall NPR, but I do recall an interview with one of the US Olympic team doctors who has done extensive work on pointe and dance-related injuries.
see: https://selinashah.com/press/interviews/
Yep, even dancers who go on point later end up with injuries and issues like arthritis. It’s really that point is a bad idea, period. It’s an archaic holdover. For some reason people don’t view it negatively like foot binding.
I can't watch ballet. I actually, not figuratively, cringe when they do en pointe. It's like watching somebody cut themselves or even be in situations where they might, like an amateur youtube cook chopping unsafely; just physically and psychologically too uncomfortable for me. I don't have a problem with blood or injuries, per se; watching a surgical operation is tolerable, as long as I believe it's not actually painful. Maybe if I forced myself to watch enough ballet I'd learn to accept it's not that painful during the performance (is it?), but it'd take more effort than I care to put into it. Something about discrete, focused pain just triggers me. I also have to look away when getting my blood drawn or given a shot, and don't want to watch others getting the needle, either.
Conversely, I think one of the reasons some people are mesmerized by en pointe is the idea of it being painful, in the moment or at least the training/practice, and the manifest dedication involved.
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Do we?
Never heard of this ballet thing til now. Have heard plenty of rumblings about headers in youth soccer. For both boys and girls.
Male dancers and female athletes exist…
“This smacks of misogyny!” I say as I cross out “sports where players regularly sustain CTE-causing injuries” and write “boys”
https://www.sfchronicle.com/sports/article/cte-concussion-wo...
“I’m so enlightened I forgot women play soccer” is definitely a weird take.
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You are making it weirder still by trying to defend your bias by saying it’s a problem with society. You are the one who called soccer a male sport. And now for some reason you are trotting out tropes about female soccer players being lesbians. Why?
There is no sentence in this post that makes sense. “Women aren’t sports stars”, “only lesbians get CTE or whatever”, “I can’t have deeply bizarre takes about women’s sports because I have daughters”
Nobody talked about any of these things man and you’re incoherent and/or wrong about all of them.
Like normally it is pointless to evaluate word salad on whether it’s factual or not but it’s like you put a bunch of those fridge magnets with words on them in a bag, shook it up and dumped it on the floor, and somehow they all randomly managed to assemble into legible but only wrong statements
There is no 'we'. There are different values that value different things.
Slave values = sacrificing yourself is noble and good.
Aristocracy values = being born an aristocrat is noble and good.
Trader values = enriching oneself is noble and good.
Religious fundamentalist values = following the one and only book is good.
Little girl/consumer values = my emotions are good.
Etc.
Slave and religious values are being replaced by trader and little girl/consumer values.
Boys embody slave or trader values. Girls embody little girl/consumer values.
Boys go to war, girls are little princesses. Ballet/women's pro sports are a niche for the few women who embody slave values. Most embody little girl/consumer values.
Things in Galt’s Gulch must be pretty crazy since they put in wifi
I think it's more that the male-dominant sports are billion dollar industries driven by deep-seated cultures of masculinity that view safety as weakness, and spectatorship that wants to see violence. No one watches ballet wanting to hear the sound of the dancers' skulls colliding.
They do watch for the en pointe, which is beautiful precisely because it's not something we expect bodies to be able to do. And the pain and injury risk also, I think, adds to the effect. I don't think it's all that different from what people experience seeing heads or bodies getting slammed, except en pointe is feminine coded (graceful) whereas slamming is masculine coded (brutish). Similarly, silent, hidden pain (feminine) versus pain as spectacle (masculine).
Wait till you hear about an insane game called (US) football!
Okay, now attack boxing.
If anything, we’re reversing progress on this front, given we just had a UFC match on the front lawn of the White House.
Can you give us anything more to go on as to where or how you heard this?
Was it NPR specifically, or your local NPR affiliate?
Keep in mind that "NPR" programming often consists of actual network programming, independent works distributed by NPR, and productions from either affiliated subnetworks (e.g., "MPR", Minnesota Public Radio, PRI/PRX, APM), and in cases individual affiliate stations (WBUR, WAMU, WNYC, WHYY, KQED, KOUW, KUTX, KCRW, etc.), or other noncommercial radio networks (e.g., Pacifica). And increasingly podcasting networks.
Using NPR's site search, the most recent story focusing on a specific ballerina's injury story is from 2017, on Fresh Air (WHYY) "From Injury To Recovery, A Ballerina Fought To Retire On Her Own Terms" <https://www.npr.org/2017/07/10/536434340/from-injury-to-reco...>. It's possible that that replayed more recently. Or that you're loosely anchored in time.
There's a story more closely matching your description, though focusing on gymnastics, in USA Today, March 2026, "How two painful sports stories underscore girls' unique injury risks" <https://www.usatoday.com/story/sports/2026/03/08/girls-great...>
My memory was that this was an NPR story, the local affiliate has distinct production values that I believe I would have noticed. However, even searching the local affiliate's site only yielded the stories you referenced.
My only other suggestion is that stories often get shopped around and carried by multiple outlets. If you're anything like me, "the past year" might actually be the past five years, or more. There's often a study, book, institute, or specific investigator/doctor behind the story. If you really want to track down the story you might try broadening your search on those dimensions. (Or others which come to mind.)
Good luck!
And on that topic, our cultures default to shoes that press your big toe in, creating bunions in everyone predisposed to bunions. Just because we think it's cute when a shoe is rounded.
You have to specifically look for shoes that don't do it.
(I recommend Whitins on Amazon. $35 shoes.)
IMHO, the primary thing you want to look for is "wide toebox shoes", though I just got a second pair of Whitin and they are my primary day-to-day shoe.
I've got massive bunions and I remember as a kid (in the '70s-80s) that shoes for my big feet seemed to come in one width no matter the length. A size 8 and a size 10 seemed to be about the same width, the 10s just looked clownishly long. It was like I was wearing canoes on my feet.
I have giant bunions which thankfully don't bother me unless I put them in the wrong shoe, then every step is a world of pain. Finally in my mid-50s I was like "Wait, what is this 'wide toebox' shoe, that sounds like just the ticket. And it absolutely was.
Pro tip: Unless you have a narrow foot, try a cheap wide toebox shoe.
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