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Fashion hound
SU student to host Caribbean beauty pageant

By Ivy Tan

Terrance Smith walks fast, usually with his head and shoulders slightly thrown back. His back is always perfectly straight.

Ironically, this posture seems to foretell the confident attitudes and postures of the many beauties that will be featured in Miss Teen Bahamas World 2009, a beauty pageant that Smith, a sophomore communications and rhetorical studies major at Syracuse University, will be hosting live on television in the Bahamas on August 16.

Sitting in the waiting area of the admissions office in the College of Visual and Performing Arts, Smith, who works in the office as a secretary's assistant, was putting the final touches of his assignment for his favorite class, African American Studies.

The day was Monday, right after Halloween weekend. Smith was busy telling people at work about the weekend he took on not one, but three different identities: a psych ward escapee, Miss Keystone Light and a dead mime. It seemed as if everyone in the office was eager to hear a piece of the T.D. Smith notoriety depicted by over 3,000 photos of him on Facebook.

The day after his all-nighter Halloween debauchery, Smith was at the VPA's Fashion Show-Off in Lyman Hall, spending most of the day there doing make-up for the models on the runway.

"He's just Terrance. He's a free-spirit," said Stephanie Levin, one of the models.

In addition to work, school and preparing to host the upcoming Miss Teen Bahamas World, Smith is also currently working on his personal blog for VPA, "Simply…Terrance."

While the rest of the blogs on SU's VPA profile have mostly words and narratives on snippets of the bloggers' daily activities, Smith wanted to go beyond. On Monday, he recorded videos of himself after work and in between classes for the blog. There were also photo shoots pictures of him by Puerto Rican photographer Charlie G, posted on the site.

"If I'm going to do something, I always go all-out," Smith said.

Smith's interest in beauty pageants began at a young age.
"I thought it was fascinating how I can watch 50 women on television walking around in their swimsuits. I really don't know what sparked it (the fascination with beauty pageants), but I like it because it's something that year after year, I can predict who wins. So it's like challenging myself to see if I'm right or wrong," Smith said.

When Smith was 13 years old, he started his own Web site where he posted interviews he conducted with various pageant winners and contestants. The interviews were published in a monthly newsletter for beauty pageants he started called "Final Issue."

The interviews, including one with Miss USA 2002, Shauntay Hinton, can still be viewed on the Web site at finalissue.tripod.com.

"We had two lines in the house, and I would pick up the other line to make sure he was interviewing the person he said he was supposed to interview. And he really was interviewing her," Smith's mother, Mary Rodriguez, said.

The pageant that Smith will host this summer is owned by the Theodore Elyett Production company. The company's president and founder, Theodore Sealy, wrote in a message that he was busy with Fashion Week at the time of this story, so he would be
unavailable for an interview.

"I don't like people getting in between what I like to do and what I want to do. And if that means I have to put up a front, I'm going to put it on, because I don't want people messing around with my goals and dreams. Sometimes, those are things I have to protect," Smith said.

When Smith received tickets to this month's Woodie Awards, mtvU's annual music awards, he said he would bring his friend Luke to attend the show. He will also be wearing an outfit designed by Leilani Maldonado, a fashion design sophomore and close friend.

"He lets people in, at least to a certain
part. That's the first layer of Terrance, and when you have more experiences with him, you start to know him better and you get another layer," Maldonado said.

Smith's life hasn't always been an easy one. He has experienced a number of setbacks, including the time he first moved to Puerto Rico. Rodriguez said that her son's first name was not common in Puerto Rico, and as a result, many kids taunted him in school.

"They would call me names like 'tierra,' which means dirt in Spanish, 'Teresa,' 'Mother Nature.' It was pretty cruel," Smith said. Earlier this year, in February, one of his close friends passed away and he flew back to Puerto Rico to attend the funeral, along with Maldonado. "I think he gets very attached to people, and that was probably a turning point in his life," said Charlotte Santella, his supervisor at work.

Back in his room, Smith was busy cleaning up the week's worth of clothes, shoes and papers littered on the floor.

Bottles of styling gel, cleaning detergents, and one or two sea shell bracelets occupy the shelves next to his bed.

Besides doing his weekly cleaning, Smith was also getting ready to go tanning for the Caribfest Day Show and Pageant, an event hosted by SU's Caribbean Students Association that was on Saturday, November 8.

"I am competing in the Caribfest pageant for (the title of) Mr. Caribfest. I am going to win," he said.

So Smith was going "all-out" again. He was going tanning to get his complexion even for the beach-wear session of the competition. He had sketched out the designs of the outfits he would wear for the competition.
His good friend Maldonado would put the clothes together for him to ensure a clean victory.

But on Saturday, Smith didn't win Mr. Caribfest.

During the show, he had whipped around his
beach robe when strutting down the runway, head and shoulders thrown back, lips in the usual proud pout. It was evident to him all along who the winner was.

As he walked around the room, dodging books and balls of clothes, he said, "My first grade teacher told me 'Believe in yourself.' I know it's cheesy, but in the first grade you just take in whatever they say to you. It's one of the few phrases that actually stuck with me."