Fiddled again, still no female avatars, but the sculpting is waaaaaaayyy better. The new menu system is loaded with bugs but is such a huge improvement over the old one that I don't mind.
Overall, this has really rekindled my excitement in the new portraits, not only that, but its restored my faith in CCP as a company. The fact that they decided to, 1, listen to their playerbase and change the menu system completely, 2, have the guts to say, we're not done, we're pushing back the release date, and 3, the fact that they've committed to not releasing a buggy product.
Its a huge step forward, IMO.