The Bread Exam

About the Work Tradition prevented Lebanese women from talking openly about their bodies, so we had to show them how to perform a self-exam without ever mentioning nor showing breasts. However, they respect these traditions and don’t want to break away from them. So we used this to our advantage and decided to join forces with one of the oldest customs in the world: baking bread. “The Bread Exam” is a recipe video where a traditional Lebanese baker, Um Ali, demonstrates the steps of a breast self-exam through a similar gesture: the act of kneading and pressing dough. The gestures are shown without a single mention of breasts, transforming an intimate and shameful subject into an acceptable, everyday experience. The original Bread Exam video was released on social media during Pink October (4th). The recipe was also available via more traditional touch points: on Spinneys’ packs of flour, on bread wrappers and demonstrated live in souks and Spinneys stores. Soon after, the recipe expanded to the Middle East via a Jordanian influencer (Manal Alalem), before spreading to Europe on World Cancer Day (4th February) as influencers in Turkey, Germany and the UK shared their own Bread Exams, reaching millions of women around the world. An Instagram reminder even told women to keep self-checking every month. Thanks to baking, self-checking went from a taboo to a tradition, providing women with a brand new ritual: 86% declared that from now on baking will always remind them to self-check.