This feedback is intended to kick off a discussion about the current dialogue and UI choices at join.secondlife.com.
I find the avatar selection dialogue on join.secondlife.com to be very difficult to use, even for someone who has been in Second Life for a while, so probably more so for a first time user.
The female and male avatar shapes you must select from all look very similar with almost no variation in body shape. Being presented with that as the first thing makes starting to get an initial avatar an unsatisfactory experience in my opinion.