Originally Posted by
WhiteArchmage
False equivalence and strawmanning:
The Lore excuse for having the males not be playable was just that: an excuse to justify not having them in the game because their models don't exist. But male Viera DO exist in the Lore, they're just rare. And Lorewise we have other races that are supposed to be rare and they're playable. It wasn't said to ignore the Lore, just that their Lore didn't make them unplayable: if the Lore had said there ARE no male Viera and the females just spawn fully formed from the Wood, that would have shut the door on them, but it didn't.
For their appearance: SE wrote their Lore, and their looks are accurate to what said Lore says: Males and Females are indistinguishible until puberty, even when they're naked. In this case it just means that they tend to look similar to one another. This was known way back in Stormblood because of the Dramaturge's dialog, with additions by Matsuno.