Two art questions, to spitball ideas.

First, does being active and having agency in a scene help reduce peoples sense of the character just being eye candy? Like tons has already been written about boobplate and chainmail bikinis. If the boobplate wearer is from a culture where the armor also tends towards sculpted abs and is taking charge of the scene, is that okay with people as opposed to her just looking cheesecakey?

Second, how often do gender nonconforming behaviors wind up showing up in art? As noted, being able to change one's physical sex for a moderate cost has some unintended consequences and doesn't show much if the character is indistinguishable from cis at a first glance (since a glance is all we get in an art piece, and someone who passes perfectly will by definition be impossible to tell from a cis person). Someone AFAB who hasn't magically altered their body but still prefers to present masc is not unknown; a suit or tuxedo that's been appropriately tailored is a look I've seen in real life, and a small chested woman going for sculpted abplate could work too. A masculine bodied person wanting to present femme is going to be trickier because there are a lot of cultural landmines re: man-in-a-dress and effeminate men in general, but gendernonconforming people in art and described in the setting book might communicate an openness to exploring genderspace than simply saying that physical transformation is possible and having few to no good ways to show that in play.