This is a joke right? I mean it has to be. If it's not then Square really have totally lost touch not only with North American audiences, but with their own core audience.

Their core audience wouldn't care if the main character were thin, and so-called girly. It's common in a lot of Japanese games and them trying to appeal to North American audiences is a bad idea because they aren't North American. Trying to ditch the distinct Japanese charm their games have which obviously appeals to people here (otherwise how would every FF sell millions) in favour of a character archetype they're not familiar with is a bad idea. The people who don't mind the Japanese styling aren't bothered by it, and those who don't like it probably don't like Japanese RPG's and don't care if they replace the main character with macho character #734. Especially when most Japanese developers can't seem to figure out why any of those characters made here are appealing western audiences anyway. The best I've seen them manage is one liner spewing American action hero stereotypes that were old in the 80's.

I guess I'm ranting a bit. Short version: Japanese need to stop trying to emulate western developers and stick to making their own style of games. They didn't dominate the market for the better part of 20+ years by compromising their own style to pander to western audiences.