We live in the age of what is called "multiculturalism" in the United States. To be white and ethnic, sometimes even to be a person of color, is fashionable. This is true not only in the culture at large, but also in the academic fields of American literary and cultural studies, where the intersection between race/ethnicity and the female body is a popular subject for research. Most scholars who write about this topic, however, have focussed on what it means to be a woman of color in the United States. It is only recently that research is beginning to pay attention to white women's bodies.
