Racial transformation has been a thing for a very long time. You can't say that there aren't a LOT of people out there who seek to become a new race or assimilate among a specific race.
I mean, they've been having political cartoons about black people trying to whiten their skin to blend into white society since the 1800s.
Even an actor like Jackie Chan had plastic surgery on his eyes to make them "more western" because he believed that would make him more attractive to western viewers if his eyes were less traditionally Asian.
There are definitely some crazy parts of this case, but, outside of one crazy woman, even I know people who wanted to be a different race. I had a former roommate who identified himself as "black" and wanted to be a rapper, even though his African ancestry was less than 5% compared to everything else.
People are focusing on her, exclusively, but I know individuals first-hand that did the same thing.