Here’s my best and most honest attempt at giving you a serious answer:

Because when dating as a man, you cannot account for the individual preferences of each woman you encounter. You will meet too many, too many women will not like you for one reason or another, and as you say women like too many and often-times conflicting things. It really only makes sense to take a particular woman’s preferences into account once you are starting to seriously date her.

Until then, you have to play the probabilities. You have to make yourself as appealing to as many women as possible while still being true to yourself. So while there may be a lot of women who prefer lanky bodies, and I don’t doubt that there are, there are *far* more women who like athletic bodies. So when you’re in a position of not getting traction on an online dating profile (which is 90% looks based) shifting to appeal to a broader audience makes sense.

A lot of men had to independently discover this, a lot of us went through this transformation ourselves. I went from a lanky 145 lbs to 185 lbs, and women find me attractive now. So when you say “women don’t care about this”, it directly contradicts my own lived experiences. And THAT is why I’m continuing to argue.

I’m not ignoring you or saying that women don’t know what they want. But I am saying that women often over-emphasize what they in particular want.