The Bat family provides several great examples of male characters with extremely repressed sexuality, as well as numerous femme fatales who are constantly forgiven for no particular reason other than they are women.

You can't have ugly women in television (except for maybe comedies or comedic characters, like the black lawyer women in Bones).

Ellenor Frutt (Camryn Manheim) from The Practice is basically the only 'unattractive' female character I've seen who is given serious treatment in a TV show. She had genuine issues which included, but were not limited to, the fact that she had body-image issues. The Practice's characters were actually really well written most of the time.