So, I spent almost half an hour to customize my characters face and got really frustrated. I gave up and patched up a face that wasn't the ugliest I had seen. Now I'm a level 32 mage and with wearing a mage hood everything was fine but now I'm wearing a Mage's circlet and have to face the fact that my fearsome Breton mage looks like an old lady. I'm trying to convince my self that I'm bothering myself for nothing. Is it pure madness to start over at this point?

Are you playing on the PC? If so, enter the console and type "showracemenu" in order to Edit your character as you see fit, as many times as you need to get your character looking just how you want.

I do that all the time:/
The highest level I have ever gotten to was 16, I ALWAYS restart...
Try making a guy, they are way easier and you don't really care about what they look like as much. Although I just retarted my level 15 guy to make yet another female Mage...it's like a never ending cycle.

Is it even possible for a Breton female not to have a wrinkled forehead (without using mods)?

This is exactly what I'm going through.
My first character was a decent-looking, dare I say pretty, level 12 Imperial female but she was too skinny and her skills were too spread out. I was having lots of fun with her though.
Now, I've been trying to create a good-looking female with countless mods but I can't seem to do it ever since. Also, the shadows in the game make it worse. Initially, the woman will look gorgeous at the character screen while looking ugly in-game. I think I might just roll as an Argonian or Khajit.

I wasn't thrilled with the default character appearance options, male or female. Hopefully you're playing PC. If so, just download some texture mods. There are a couple mods that remove forehead wrinkles. Why the developers thought they were necessary is beyond me.

I only use mods that change my character's appearance, not any game dynamics, so it doesn't feel like cheating. Here's my imperial character using maybe 3 different appearance mods (aside from the armor, which I only really used for this screenshot): http://i1186.photobucket.com/albums/z371/echo1162/ScreenShot39copy.jpg

Other than that, I'd say what works for me is to find eyes, a nose, and a mouth that I think look good together first, then move on to the sliders that change proportions, position, and makeup/tone. As was said earlier, use showracemenu in the command console to edit your current character, just don't try to change the race or it will completely screw up your skills.

I'm pretty sure the defaults are designed to make you want to customize them. Many of them are just awful, and even the good ones need work. And yet...it's totally possible to create gorgeous characters in this game. Bizarre.

I think that this is the case with most RPGs, really.

Look at the default faces for Oblivion, for example.

My problem is that my character is a male Breton.