CORAL SPRINGS, Fla. – A 21-year-old dreamer from South Florida is proud of her Southeast Asian and African heritage and she hopes that the authenticity she embraces will help her win the Miss Universe crown one day.
Matea Mahal Smith, an aspiring trauma surgeon from Coral Springs, recently became the first Filipina of Black descent to be crowned Miss Filipina International during the 10-year history of the pageant.
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Smith isn’t afraid of competition. She was 12 when she became the Broward County 200-meter track-and-field champion. At 14, the Coral Springs Middle School student started to feel pain in her hip and underwent surgery.
“I wear my scars with pride because they tell a story. It took a lot of time and self-reflection to get there ... You have to think past the scars ... Beauty is about confidence and not being afraid to show the world who you truly are,” Smith said on Thursday evening.
While a student at J.P. Taravella High School, Smith continued running and swimming competitively, and the pain started again. She was eventually diagnosed with hip dysplasia, a congenital condition that required two more surgeries. She had dreamed of becoming a division one athlete, but she had to find new dreams.
Smith had been modeling, and then decided to compete in her first pageant, The Miss Florida Teen USA, as Miss Coral Springs Teen USA 2021. She has learned a lot about pageants since, and neither the screws in her hip nor the surgical scars got in the way of her winning the Miss Filipina International swimsuit competition.
There were 40 other candidates who also traveled to Los Angeles, California from all over the world to compete for the Miss Filipina International crown at the stylish Beverly Hilton Hotel, in Beverly Hills. Smith, who is also of Jamaican descent and was born in Plantation, was the only one who wore luscious curly hair.
“The greatest piece of wisdom I have received from my mom is to stay true to who you are,” Smith said during a question and answer segment on stage. “My mom has taught me to embrace my cultural heritage, my uniqueness and to be a proud Afro-Filipina.”
Her mother, Marilou “Mari” Pantoja-Smith, who was born in Manila and moved to the United States when she was 15 years old, was still gleaming with pride on Thursday evening. During the pageant, also known as MFI, Smith represented Rizal, a mountainous province on the island of Luzon, in the northern Philippines.
“She has been going to Rizal since she was two years old,” said Pantoja-Smith, a registered nurse, adding that her daughter has become a celebrity there.
In May, the mother and daughter visited Pililla, a municipality in Rizal, where members of their family still live, near the vast Laguna Lake. Smith won Pililla’s religious-historical beauty pageants, which were adopted during the Spanish colonial period going back to 1565. She said she was “beyond honored.”
Hundreds of people lined up the streets of Pililla to mark the ancient tradition. Smith wore the Reina Elena crown. Her long golden gown with layers of chiffon glided on the cement, as she started the annual Flores de Mayo procession, which commemorates the Romans’ recovery of the Holy Cross in Jerusalem.
“I was wearing four-inch heels for about five hours walking around,” Smith said adding that she felt “grateful” and “amazed” at how many people took the time to participate and greet her.
The experience also helped Smith to prepare for the scrutiny of the glamourous MFI pageant’s judges. Smith is dedicated. She has juggled her work as a University of Florida student of behavioral and cognitive neuroscience, modeling, pageant training, and volunteering as a Maya’s Hope ambassador.
“During COVID my mom started volunteering with Maya’s Hope, and then we went to the Phillippines in 2022 and I wanted to come along to meet the children,” said Smith about her commitment to the New York-based nonprofit organization that helps kids in need in the Phillippines and now Ukraine.
Smith said her ability to make a difference in people’s lives is very rewarding and she has met many intelligent women during the pageants. On Aug. 5, Miss Filipina International 2022 Blessa Ericha Figueroa crowned Smith as her successor, and Miss Universe Philippines 2023 Michelle Dee placed the sash on to mark her reign.
“She made history as the first-ever Afro-Filipina crowned with the international title,” Pantoja-Smith wrote in an e-mail to Local 10 News Chief Meteorologist Betty Davis, who was also proud of Smith.
Aside from wearing the crown decorated with Japanese pearls and Swiss blue topaz, Smith won a BMW 2 Series car that she plans to drive from Coral Springs to Gainesville, a $10,000 gift certificate from iSkin Beverly Hills, and an opportunity to compete in the Miss Universe Philippines pageant next year.
The winner of that pageant will represent the Phillippines in the Miss Universe pageant. Smith already knows that her Jamaican-American father, Seitu Smith, a math teacher at J.P. Taravella High School, will be ready to cheer for her as loudly as he did during the MFI pageant in Beverly Hills.
“I did it with her with sports and I am going to do it again with her pageants ... I am just happy that she is happy,” the proud father said on Thursday night.
The Broward County Public Schools teacher still has family in his parents’ native Jamaica, where Blacks won emancipation from slavery in 1838 and segregation persisted through much of the 1970s. They are also proud of the new Miss Universe Philippines 2023′s achievement.
“She is breaking barriers,” Seitu Smith said about his daughter. “She is just setting a path for others to follow — in a good way.”
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