There are countless mods that improve character appearance and make them look like real humans, which makes the game surprisingly better than it already is. Which even shows in the presets that you see when you’re first creating your character.
In any case, a layer of realism seems to be missing. It sometimes feels like both men and women could look far more shallow than they do now, which would make the Skyrim experience much easier on the eyes. One of the things that definitely hasn’t aged quite well in Skyrim is the way characters look.