easy ? about avatar but I am stuck....

I am brand spanking new to SL. I created an avatar from the setup menu off of the website and selected the darn Rabbit skin because it said I could change it once inside SL.
Now I can't! I can adjust the size of my eyes, ears, lightness of my skin, etc but am still stuck as a bunny! Please help!!!

You can pick avatars when setting up an account? *Runs to make a bunny alt*

EDIT: Went and looked and sure as shit you have I tink 6 choices per gender for a begining avatar now, anyone know when this started?

They are:
Girl/Boy Next door (the old default)
City Chic
Harajuku
Cybergoth
Furry
Chic
Nightclub

Also noticed it asks if you are sure your name to start with a lower case letter, I didn't care I liked akdflkajdf Bartlett

EDIT EDIT: All the new beginning avatars are in the library, in the clothing folder.

To get rid of the furry avatar, I would suggest the following:

Right click on yourself and choose Take Off -> Detach All. This will get rid of the furry head and tail.
Then go into your inventory, open up Library->Clothing-> and drag one of the other folders onto your avatar, like say 'City Chic' of the proper gender.

Hi Jade-

Go to LIBRARY in Inventory, and look under BODY PARTS folder. Should be other skins there. Click on one and click WEAR.

Hope this helps.

You don't change your avatar inside the appearance menu (which it sounds like that's where you're looking, and a very understandable mistake). Go into your inventory, scroll down to Library, click the arrow to expand that, then go down to Clothing.. click the arrow to expand that, then you should see all the avatars that were first presented in your choices, all contained within their own folders. Click on a folder (you do not need to open the folder) and drag the whole thing onto yourself. This will do 2 things. It will change your av to be whatever you chose, and it will place a copy of the folder in your inventory, where you can then simply click on it and choose "Replace Outfit" from then on out to wear that avatar. You do not need to detach anything, if you have something on and drag a folder onto you, or use the replace outfit option, anything NOT in the folder will be taken off. The other folder option which says "Add To Outfit" does exactly what it says, in that it will add itself to your avatar without removing anything (with the exception that if you add something which uses an attachment point which is already being used, it will replace whatever is currently worn on that attachment point).

Here ends Avatar Basics 101.

Everyone else here has already posted good suggestions. So i'll just give you some insight into the -WHY-.

You're SL body consists of several parts which can be worn independent of each other:
Shape - your basic body build
Skin - this covers your shape and makes you look like you
Hair - special case, i'll discuss in a moment
Eyes - your eye color & appearance

It's already been mentioned that you have several bodies to choose from in your library (they are in everyone's library right now, even Dnel's, giggles), and you can pick up many many more throughout SL. You can wear the skin from one, the shape from another, the eyes from a 3rd, the possibilities are endless and up to you.

If you are a furry, you can switch furry body parts and become an entirely new species, purely of your own choice.

Really, you should only need "Appearance" to tweak your appearance. The 4 parts above are "worn" and cannot be removed or detatched. You must replace them with another part, so only a skin can replace a skin. You "wear" the new skin, and your rabbit skin is removed. You can tweak the new skin in appearance mode and save that as a 3rd skin. Again, the possibilities are endless.

Hair.... as a new player you start out with hair that is essentially a texture and part of your body. As you walk around you will see many other hairs of different shapes, styles, colors. These are likely to be prim hairs that are attached to your "skull" attachment point. Underneath them is a "hair" base. This worn base replaces the body part "Hair". It can be bald (most are) or colored (mine is colored to match my Hair prim). In these cases, the hair is not part of your body and is detatchable. In the case of new player hair, you are really using a hair base with a texture on it. It is not detachable, it is only replaceable.

If you haven't stopped by there yet, there is a new player welcome center in Ahern. And i would also recommend that you visit "Free Dove" (use search - Places, to find it). The owner there is a very generous woman who has set up a very nice place for new players. Most major clothing makers have something there, and everything that i've seen is either free or only 1L. Moreover, the clothing isn't the usual low-quality freebies... most of these are are VERY good quality. The clothing makers use it to showcase their works and introduce you to their lines for when you want to buy some clothes. Free Dove also has many cards around the store that help teach you how to do things in SL.

Another nice place is the Gnubie center. If you are a furry, they have a Luskwood vending machine just outside with a Luskwood AV in it... for free.