Rama Duwaji is the “it girl” of New York City.

According to her fans, Duwaji, the wife of Mayor Zohran Mamdani, is a “modern-day Princess Diana.” Some have gone so far as to cut their hair in her signature “bixie.” In late January, The New York Times wrote an entire article about Duwaji’s attendance at a Whitney Museum party, noting that she “hung out with a small band of friends” while a security detail kept watch. Meanwhile, her Instagram following keeps growing. This time last year she had about 24,000 followers. Today, she has more than 2 million.

The irony, according to Duwaji, is that she is not a public figure. In the one interview the 28-year-old has granted since her husband took office, she told Hyperallergic, a social justice–minded arts publication, that she is more focused on “allowing my art to speak for itself.” The mayor used similar language in early March to brush off reports that she had liked a post supporting the Hamas attack against Israel on October 7, 2023. Mamdani told reporters that she’s a “private person” who doesn’t deserve the scrutiny of an elected official.

“I, however, was elected to represent all eight and a half million people in this city, and I believe that it’s my responsibility, because of that role, to answer any questions about my thoughts and my policies and my decisions,” he added.

Almost immediately, debates broke out over the definition of a private person. Can a First Lady who lives in Gracie Mansion claim to be such a thing? Or is that just a shield she and the mayor hide behind to evade tough questions on her inflammatory politics?

For all their ideological differences, Duwaji’s closest corollary may be Melania Trump, another political spouse who at first seemed spotlight-averse—and whose every gesture, outfit, and X post was read like tea leaves. In the first Trump administration, she was slow to move into the White House, reportedly to prioritize her duties as a mother instead of her new role as First Lady.

But Melania has come to embrace the job. Melissa DeRosa, the Democratic strategist who helped run former New York governor Andrew Cuomo’s campaign against Mamdani, said Duwaji still has one foot in and one foot out. It’s “absurd” for her to claim she’s a private citizen, DeRosa told me.

In February, Duwaji sat front row at a New York Fashion Week show, sandwiched between her stylist and supermodel Joan Smalls. And in the run-up to Mamdani’s swearing-in, Duwaji graced the cover of New York magazine in a photo shoot replete with a 19-person crew and sculptural Marc Jacobs duds.

“She picks and chooses when she wants to be a public person, and that’s not how it works,” said DeRosa. “It’s laughable.”

The revelation that Duwaji liked scores of anti-Israel Instagram posts has not tamped down the adoration, according to Fabien Levy, who served as deputy mayor for communications under Mayor Eric Adams. He said Mamdani’s supporters are “pretty dug in.”

“I don’t think there’s anything that he, or his administration, or his wife could do that would get a lot of them to leave the cool factor they’ve created around him,” Levy said.

After The Washington Free Beacon uncovered Duwaji’s old social media accounts in which she reposted content in support of Palestinian violence, users took to TikTok to defend her. An account named “bronxiemthope” posted a video telling viewers “There’s nothing you can tell us about her that’s going to make us dislike her.”

The wife of a mayor who preaches the “warmth of collectivism” seems less concerned with building a big tent.

I’ve recently found even more radical material on what appears to be Duwaji’s Spotify account, where two playlists dedicated to anti-Israel anthems were curated in the days after October 7. On Tuesday afternoon, I reached out to the mayor’s office for comment. They declined, but by Wednesday, the account had been made private.

The first playlist, titled “hungry but sexy for palestine,” features songs like “Amrikkka,” “Intifada,” and one called “Ana Bakrah Israel,” which translates into “I Hate Israel.” Another number titled “Rajaoui Filistini,” a 2019 song popularized by Moroccan soccer fans that has boomed in popularity the last few years, asks for God’s protection “from the darkness of betrayal/oppression, and from the Jews who are greedy for you.” The second playlist, called “p2p Palestine 2 Pree—DC protest trip,” appears to have been created as a soundtrack for the January 13, 2024 March on Washington for Gaza. One song, added on the day of the protest, is titled “FREE PALESTINE.” It is a short song that manages to pack multiple blood libels and death wishes to Israel in less than three minutes. The most repeated line is “Fuck Israel, Israel a bitch.” Other lyrics include:

Free Palestine bitch, Israel gon’ die bitch

Nigga, it’s they land, why you out here tryna rob it

Bullshit prophets, y’all just want the profit.

And: No shalom bitch, nigga, this Haram bitch.

The Spotify account also has a playlist titled “ACAB” created during the summer of 2020—a shorthand for “All Cops Are Bastards.” The cover image is a woman dressed in traditional Indian formal wear and wielding a glittering knife.

On March 7, The Free Press published an investigation documenting years of Duwaji’s engagement with divisive anti-Israel content in the wake of October 7. At the time of publication, I was able to locate roughly 70 likes of anti-Israel Instagram posts. I have since uncovered dozens of additional likes, including content that libels the Jewish nation, engages in Holocaust inversion, and celebrates the release of convicted Palestinian terrorists, including Tarek Barghout, a man convicted for his role in shooting civilians at an Israeli bus stop in the West Bank. She has also liked two 2025 posts from former Fox News host Tucker Carlson. In one of the clips, Carlson argues that employees of AIPAC, the lobbying group that advocates on behalf of American Jews who support Israel (which is most of them), should register as foreign agents.

Duwaji herself has taken to the streets to protest Israel.

An Instagram post uploaded by one of her close friends places her at an anti-Israel rally in Times Square post–October 7. In the photo, Duwaji and her friend are resting their heads on one another, draped in keffiyehs. Amid a sea of Palestinian flags, a sign is visible that reads “PALESTINE WILL BE FREE!” in bold, black letters.

A longtime Democratic consultant with close ties to Cuomo told me that Duwaji will lean into the private citizen bit as long as she can to protect herself.

“She’s trying to get the benefits without being held accountable,” he said, “and so far, she’s been quite successful.”

Before she was New York City’s First Lady, Duwaji bounced around the globe. Born in Houston to Syrian parents, she moved to New York before relocating to Dubai in 2007, where her mother, Bariah Dardari, a pediatrician, took a job at the American Hospital. (Bariah has since become a prominent expert in the region on the topic of childhood autism.) Her father, Marwan, works as a software developer. App store listings suggest he’s behind Digital D, LLC, a company that makes ad-supported educational apps designed to teach children basic math.

After a year at the Virginia Commonwealth University outpost in Doha, Qatar, Duwaji transferred to its Richmond campus. In a 2019 interview with Shado magazine, an indie outlet that says it’s on a mission to “decolonize the current arts and media landscape,” Duwaji said she felt like an outsider when she returned to the States after a decade abroad. “My sense of identity took a hit so I think I kind of clung to my Middle Eastern identity.”

After graduation, Duwaji moved back to Dubai. By then she had an established aesthetic—bold illustrations, always in black and white—and a dedicated focus: the perceived injustice of Western beauty standards, which was the subject of her 2018 comic Razor Burn.

In 2019, Lena Kassicieh, a Palestinian American artist, told me she attended a workshop titled “Unlearning Beauty” that Duwaji held at an Apple Store at a Dubai mall. She remembered Duwaji beginning the class with a series of questions: “Why are women or people always depicted through the same lens? Why can’t we celebrate different standards of beauty?”

She added that for Duwaji, the subject was personal.

“I never fit into these classic roles of Western beauty and so like a lot of my work is examining that,” Kassicieh remembered Duwaji saying.

In March 2021, Duwaji moved back to the U.S. and into a three-bedroom Williamsburg apartment she shared with her college roommate (they turned the third bedroom into their studio). By August, she had met the future mayor on Hinge.

Most of the people within Duwaji’s circle who I reached out to were protective of the First Lady and reticent to speak.

When I called Thalia Bassim, a Lebanese photographer, to ask about the hangout spot she and Duwaji shared—a now-closed Brooklyn bookstore called Storm—she told me she didn’t want to put the mayor and Duwaji’s safety “in jeopardy.” Before hanging up the phone, she shared that Storm, which boycotts Israeli products, was a “space of coming together for the Arab community and allies” to be “in an act of mourning together” over Israel’s war against Hamas.

Diansakhu Banton-Perry, who first met Duwaji in the communication arts program at Virginia Commonwealth University–Richmond, said that she still gets to see her friend at least once or twice a year.

“I’m glad that she’s been able to keep her career going and not having to give up her life,” she told me.

So what is Duwaji’s life like these days? She’s set up a studio in Gracie Mansion, where she’s repurposing boxes she used in the move from her prior home in Astoria as canvases. Her art is not available for purchase anywhere—except for a nearly $100 bottle of olive oil made from West Bank–grown olives with a label designed by Duwaji, and a $40 poster meant to raise funds for “the health and dignity of Palestinians living under occupation and as refugees.” In the past, she has occasionally hosted workshops out of Storm, the bookstore, and Huda, an East Williamsburg restaurant that she first became acquainted with when the owner commissioned her to draw a choking aid poster. Last year, her tax filings stated she made just $8,860 in income.

In September, she jetted away for Paris Fashion Week with two close friends. There, they attended the show of Tala Barbotin Khalidy, a Lebanese Syrian designer, whose latest collection was inspired by Israel’s war against Hezbollah in Lebanon. While abroad, she also stopped in London for a “pop-up fundraising for Palestine,” where attendees created a mural based on the prompt: “Imagine Liberation.” Shoppers, including Duwaji, browsed clothes with keffiyeh trim, “I ❤️ PALESTINE” totes, and vintage clothing from Lebanon.

The one scandal Duwaji has addressed since moving into Gracie Mansion was the discovery of her use of the n-word on Twitter as a teenager, which was first reported by The Washington Free Beacon. She has since apologized for the tweet but has made no mention of her long history of engaging with anti-Israel content. Her list of controversies on this subject just keeps growing, most recently with the news that she had illustrated images to accompany an essay published by Susan Abulhawa, an anti-Israel activist and author who once called a pro-Israel commentator a “lying Jewish supremacist cockroach.”

Abulhawa told me that she thought Duwaji’s illustrations for the essay were “beautiful” but came at a clear cost for the First Lady.

“It’s terrible the way people are going after her,” she said. “It seems that they couldn’t get anything on her husband so they’re going after her.”

Stephen Alcorn, Duwaji’s former professor at Virginia Commonwealth University–Richmond, said he’s worried about the further “trials and tribulations that await her being in the public eye.”

Then he added one more thing—he has two daughters living in New York City.

“They are big fans of her,” he said.