I'm a girl and mostly play male characters, also because I like to see something I like while playing (although I beat Skyrim with a female).

I like playing Mass Effect 2 with default male Sheperd. Although I'm heavily into character creation and all it's details... I don't think there's anything wrong with seeking for nice visuals you can feel kinda attracted to. Creating a handsome male in Skyrim is nearly impossible though...

Im not overly obssessive about the creation of my own character but im some way all my characters end up embodying something about myself. It can be physical such as when I make a Warrior its normally "human" with long and messy brown hair, a thick beard, blue eyes and no tattoos. Some times its even Psycological, one of my favourite WoW characters was a character called "Vendron" who was a Drenai hunter, his 'deal' was that he would only speak his name and would have to be interpretated for by a friend of mine who I always played with. For some reason when given a choice I cant make a character with an 8-foot mohawk and purple tentacles coming out of the back of its head, im going to be playing this character and making descisions as them so they are a part of me so they will always end up embodying part of me.

EDIT:

To that point, I dislike playing with friends who name their character their own name, thats just wierd, or "KIllThings85" because it seems 'false' next to the character who is somehow representing me. Though I find it worse when a dude keeps playing as a Woman, especially because one of my friends is super sociable and good at talking but he keeps playing as a Woman. It gets very creepy :|

And just to be clear, there's nothing wrong with playing a female character. I've done it a bunch of time. But claiming you're doing it because you'd rather be turned on by a female is creepy.

Whenever I hear someone say they create female characters in games because "If I have to stare at an ass for 40 hours, I might as well like it." And that always rings so creepily false to me. It makes me think of some Freudian roleplaying perversion. First of all, I don't sexualize my character. I'm not oggling my Dwarf's ass. I don't stare at it and think "Man, if only I could be staring at a sexy Elf ass instead of this sweaty Dwarf." If you're sexually attracted to your digital character, or you're trying to be by creating a sexy character, you've got bigger problems than finding a more revealing set of armor. This is especially true of male gamers who make it a rule that they create only female characters in their games. At that point it's not even character creation, but it becomes wish fulfillment. If you want to play as a girl, just do it and don't come up with creepy justifications of why.

I get character creation. I too put way too much effort in getting my avatar to look just right. I could never play as most custom built characters I see. Most people just seem to throw a bunch of settings together like purple skin, a mohawk, and a white mustache, then name him xXKill-MoreXx and they're good to go. I will never understand that. I tweak the sliders for nearly an hour before I'm satisfied. And I'll usually restart the game a few times. I've even started a game over ten hours in because I decided my character's nostrils were just a little too big. I've done that more than once actually.

First off though, my characters always have to be realistic. They have to look as detailed as the in game NPC's. My character has to look as though he belongs in this world on this adventure. I have to think up a backstory and give him an appropriate name. But instead of roleplaying women in some role reversal way, I always create slightly ugly warriors. A little overweight, balding, a big beard. I give them a humble off kilter name like Barton or Tonkin. My characters would never be the lead actor of a movie. My characters look more like what they call "character actors" which means "too ugly to be the star". They end up looking like Paul Giamatti or Phillip Seymour Hoffman. If I can make them fat, I do. If I can make them Dwarves, or as short as Dwarves, I do. I don't know why. I'm five foot six, and one hundred and thirty pounds. So when I make a fat Dwarf, it's not a representation of me. I'm not making a character to look like me. I don't know why I make them fat and ugly. I just do.

So clearly, I'm also a fucking nerd. I'm a screenwriter, who lets his writing spill into his gaming in ways some would probably find weird. But even I put a line of decency between making an extremely detailed character, and making a hot chick with giant tits, because "If I'm going to stare at a character, she might as well look like a porn star." That is weird. Telling yourself it's more normal and heterosexual than playing as a dude is just a backwards logic used to make yourself feel better, because even you know it's weird.