Plastic Surgeon Uses ‘Cupid Equation’ to Create Perfect Lips. See Before and After (Exclusive)

• Dr. Ben Talei created the “Cupid Lift” procedure using an algorithm 10 years ago
• The upper lip lift is a plastic surgery procedure that takes 30 to 60 minutes and requires local anesthesia
• Talei’s Cupid Lips Center in West Hollywood, Calif., specializes in the procedure and charges $5,500 for the surgery

What if getting the lips you always dreamed of was as easy as 1, 2, 3?

It is, if you’re plastic surgeon Dr. Ben Talei, who developed a mathematical equation to give patients the perfect set of lips.

He calls it the cupid algorithm, and it’s a formula that he created to do his Cupid Lift — a $5,500, 30- to 60-minute procedure that’s exploded in popularity.

“The Cupid Lift is a form of an upper lip lift,” Talei explains to PEOPLE exclusively. “An upper lip lift can be anything that you use to lift your upper lip surgically. It could be a cut under the nose like a bullhorn or a subnasal [shortening the distance between the nose and the upper lip]. It could be a corner lift [raising the ends of the upper lip], it could be a direct one [removing skin over the upper lip]. The Cupid Lift is the most natural, controllable way to lift someone’s lip: to shorten the height of their philtrum [the groove between the lip and the nose], which can get longer with time.”

Dr. Talei says that by using his algorithm, or “Cupid equation,” he can get the lips right every single time, which is much harder to do with other lip-lifting procedures. This can also help patients look younger and have a “softer” appearance, he says, because it has a very “predictable” outcome.

“You can actually say, ‘OK, I’m going to drop up this point, drop the other point, move this point,'” he says of how he works with the equation while mapping out a patient’s lips. “And you can get the lip to a beautiful symmetrical shape each time using this algorithm. And that’s what the ‘CPID’ is, it’s center, paramedian, intermediate and diagonal. And then you can use that to control everything under the nose. Lateral to that, we just use the outer line and the nasolabial fold to control the rest of the shape.”

The “CPID” equation, which Dr. Talei uses to measure a patient’s face, eventually became “Cupid.” Not long after, he coined the Cupid Lift. He jokes that “surgeons love acronyms,” so he was excited for the coincidence, especially because the delicate shape of the top lip is often referred to as the Cupid’s bow.

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The procedure itself, which Dr. Talei started developing around 10 years ago, takes about 30 to 60 minutes under local anesthesia and the recovery is fairly minor. The surgeon says you have stitches for five days and your lip will be “puffy” for a couple weeks, but the bounce-back is quick — and the procedure is permanent, unlike if you get lip filler.

Talei has found that he’s done Cupid Lifts on patients who have had their filler dissolved because their lips have been weighed down over time. He also notes that the Cupid Lift can be done in conjunction with filler, especially for patients with very thin lips who have had a hard time with filler because their lips simply cannot accommodate the filler in the first place. The lift opens up the lip enough to be filled. “It brings [the upper lip] into the proper shape and position,” he says.

There have been prospective patients he’s had to turn away because they’re just not good candidates for a Cupid Lift, though. Why, you might ask?

“You look at their lip and it’s perfect proportion,” he says of some people who ask for a consultation but ultimately aren’t a fit. “You have a lot of those people who are already great and they just want better. And you just tell them, ‘There is no better. You are great.'”

Dr. Talei says he turns away 40%-50% of prospective patients. Another reason people are turned away is because of poor dentition. He says if people already can’t close their mouths properly, exposing their teeth more by doing an upper lip lift will only make it worse.

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Dr. Talei, who is based in Beverly Hills, Calif. and primarily operates out of the Beverly Hills Center for Plastic and Laser Surgery, has now done thousands of Cupid Lifts and has taught the procedure to other plastic surgeons as well. He opened a Cupid Lips Clinic in West Hollywood, Calif., specifically for this procedure (and adjacent procedures) with a team that he trained, and there, patients can get the Cupid Lift for $5,500.

Dr. Talei himself isn’t doing as many Cupid Lifts these days, he says — he has larger procedures to tend to — but you can still get on his books for the lip lift if you insist. However, the price tag to get your lips done by the OG doctor is much more steep: He now charges upwards of $20,000-$25,000.

For more on the procedure, including more before-and-after photos, check out the website.