Making the Exile female was most likely a later retcon itself by LucasBooks, even before Disney retconned the entire KotOR timeline.
Here's some promotional artwork for the game released by Obsidian (images too big to add to the page)
http://static.giantbomb.com/uploads/original/12/126097/1822315-wallpaper2_1600x1200.jpg
http://arts-wallpapers.com/movie_wallpapers/Star-Wars_Film-Wallpaper/images/kotor 2 sith lords dark side.jpg
If we're going to believe the promotional artwork, the main character was intended to be a Kratos looking guy with a soul patch. If this weren't the case, they'd put a female character as the focal point, or a different looking guy. We can at least ascertain that Obsidian likely intended the main character to be a male, regardless of what head you picked (obviously the real Exile was the Asian one!) KotOR 2 has gone through two layers of retconning, to the point where canonicity doesn't even matter as it's all "legends" now. That being said, I always played as Space Jesus so he's "canon" to me.