I prefer the remade statue. I think they took inspiration from ESO here, where they made most Imperial statues have heroic/warrior poses. It fits the Imperial artstyle and the culture. I mean it's Alessia, if any character warrants a 'stronk woman' pose, especially in a statue made by people who revere her, it's her.
Personally I liked the original Alessia as it gave the imperial cult more of a sense of complexity.
Elder scrolls has always had a definite level of “gender” role blurring. Even back in Arena, female warrior characters were a relatively common thing as opposed to a tokenism representation thing.
It also pretty much answered the strongest woman can beat some men, but even an average guy will beat nearly all women problem with magic being an everyday thing and balancing things out when women fighters were concerned.
Having the different sexes alter the stats was a nice touch.
Admittedly Ultima Underworld (the granddaddy of all real time first person action adventure single character focused crpgs) had a choice of male or female characters but probably cause they couldn’t be bothered to code it there was no difference in ability between a male or female character.
I suppose if pressed they could have just claimed that the Avatar (player character) was a living legend and embodied a god, so there.
One thing that these troon and gender equality morons utterly fail to grasp is that a point and a lot of the fun of an RPG is to play a character who is nothing like who you are in reality.
So if you are an ugly charmless but strong man who lives by his brawn and solves problems with fists, it could be great fun to play a beautiful blonde elven princess who flirts and charms her way through life and quests.
Of course, as we now all know, ugly men want to insist on this in real life.