Posted by onemind 5 days ago
> Dancers are taught to make everything look a certain way. There has been innovation in ballet, but always in a small angle, and in a very rigid system
> No matter how comfortable or functional, unconventional shoe designs tend to be a hard sell in the ballet community—often because they look different, featuring nontraditional materials or shapes.
The act’Pointe shoes look good IMO and they do precisely what you suggest. Not sure how well they sell given what they say Re: the culture being rigid on choice. If they don't sell well, it could be a cultural problem or one of affordability if it's e.g. patented.
There is also a whole process of customization, where the dancers spend quite a bit of time bending the shoes to their will and tweaking them to their liking.
I’d the 3D printed ones don’t last long enough to make up the price difference, or can’t be tweaked and tuned in the same way, those could both be problems.
I’d also imagine if a dancer learned in one style of shoe, they may just be comfortable with it… like Linus Torvalds maintaining an ancient obscure version of uemacs, just because that’s where is muscle memory and comfort zone is.
- A small and specialised market.
- Numerous gatekeepers, each of whom might exert a veto (dancers, teachers, company directors, etc.).
- Highly subjective judging criteria, with benefits or limitations of alternatives not being evident possibly for a long time.
- A high level of highly-interdependent skills. A dancer's performance literally turns on her shoes, and a whole set of muscle-memory, training, technique, and expectations are based on a familiar product. Changing this is probably anxiety-producing.
- Careers are relatively short, lasting perhaps 10--20 years, rarely longer. Taking big risks on equipment may have low appeal.
Balancing all of this, if there does turn out to be some spectacular advantage to new kit, it's possible that change could happen rapidly. This has been the case elsewhere in the sports world. Shoes for runners, footballers (world or American, take your pick), swimmer's costumes, skiing equipment, etc., have all changed radically over the past 50 years (and were changing well before that). Ballet has strong traditions, but those might well bend.
If you're looking at this from a tech-adoption / tech-rejection / product-management hat, you might consider what the landscapes you're facing or contemplating look like relative to the ballet world, which conditions are similar or different. Small markets might be more resistant to change, though if there's fierce and unambiguous performance differentiation you might have an edge. Vetocracy is a concept gaining awareness in numerous disciplines. Highly-gate-kept or regulated fields tend to advance more slowly. Tightly-coupled systems evolve less quickly than loosely-coupled ones. Long run-times, careers, or organisational viability might allow for greater risk taking, or at least the opportunity for new entrants to launch trying different tools.
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.
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…
https://www.sfchronicle.com/sports/article/cte-concussion-wo...
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
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.
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...>
Good luck!
You have to specifically look for shoes that don't do it.
(I recommend Whitins on Amazon. $35 shoes.)
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.
Can you please avoid generic tangents? This is in the site guidelines: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html.
"Shoes" is about as generic as one could get in a single hop from the topic.
That doesn't mean it has to gratify your curiosity or mine - no single article can do that for everyone. But it's clear that that's what makes the article on topic.
One other aspect: the best HN submissions are the ones that are most uncorrelated with anything else that's gotten attention recently - or, as I used to put it, can't be predicted from any existing sequence*. This one has that property for sure!
* https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...
Shoes with a narrow toebox (pretty much all of them, except the ones that specifically advertise as being wide) should be considered extreme body modification IMO. Fine if that's what you're into, but most of the population should not be subjected to that.
Some mid and high-end footwear brands produce boots with Munson or Munson-like lasts. It helps tremendously. I cannot go back to narrow toeboxes.
Oddly, lots of sports footwear suffers from the same issue and wide toeboxes are not as popular as they should be.
Football (soccer) boots tend to be extremely narrow. Part of the reason is to keep the foot firm in it, but I suspect a lot of players would benefit from wider boxes.
Climbing boots are another interesting one. I can't wear most brands at all. I have settled on Scarpa as they tend to be wider. A lot of climbers have a tendency to downsize them massively though, and I honestly don't know how they do that. I have been purchasing them at least at my street size, and the next pair I get will be a whole number up. Not because they're just uncomfortable, but rather because they're nearly impossible to get in otherwise. I do wish I'd find wider toeboxes though, so I could get a pair that fits tight, but not torture tight.
They have an excellent quality reputation, though new boots are spendy. Used show up occasionally.
Brands such as Rolling Dub Trio and John Lofgren use Munson lasts that closely resemble the original shape; other makers, such as Nicks Boots, Viberg, and Iron Boots have lasts that draw direct inspiration from that shape.
<https://www.stitchdown.com/info/munson-last-origins/>
There are also results from an online search, though prices are ... high. I'm seeing $600+ for boots advertised as built on Munson lasts.
Moreover, leather is a widely available product and a byproduct of the meat industry.
A shoe that has a leather upper and EVA foam makes up the rest of it is not a leather shoe. It’s a shoe with a leather upper.
If they fit poorly, you bought the wrong size or a pair made from a last that is very wrong for you. Ditto if they hurt your feet. Past a the first 3-4 wears of break-in neither of those should be true, they should fit and feel awesome. They’ll shrink if you soak them in water, and I mean soak, but even that’s usually not fatal to them, they’ll stretch back out. I have a beater pair of camp moccasins that I’ve straight-up walked down a waist-deep river in three times, and I regularly wear them for kayaking and briefly submerge them when getting in and out, and they still fit fine.
Also you don’t need to polish most of them. Hit ‘em with leather soap and conditioner a couple times a year if you want them to last a decade-plus, yes. Polish? That’s only necessary for certain types of shoes for certain purposes, and even then, you shouldn’t need to do it all the time or anything. I don’t put polish on any of mine.
(All this void if we’re talking reconstructed or fake leather like most of the “leather” shoes at the median Macy’s or other common department store, those are terrible, yeah)
Also that's a very broad category. "Leather shoes." That's like nearly every dress and athletic shoe that exists. IT's all traditional moccasins. IT's a lot of the best sandals, which certainly don't have any of the problems you've listed.