>>76511269 (OP)
They're not even playing games. They just have a poor understanding of how things work. They underestimate the difficulty of building visible muscle, so when they say they don't like muscly guys they're imagining like, super huge bodybuilders. And its not necessarily that they think really roided out guys are gross, but sometimes that they long ago hit a point of diminishing or even counterproductive returns and their ideal level of muscle has been passed. But their ideal level of muscle is still either high, maybe "probably roids high", or else pretty high with low body fat. Even girls who like kinda waify, yaoi-ish, "effeminate guys", they still have like abs when they're idealized. They're still by real world standards fit, muscly guys, they're just not bulky
Another factor is that they are attracted to personal capacity, and a dumb part of that is that the more effort a particular level of capacity requires, the less attractive it is. As long as two men are fit, strong, and attractive, one who is 25 percent stronger but tries twice as hard to be strong is often seen as less attractive. Because the implication in the womans mind is that they're both over a certain high threshhold, but one is actually more capable and powerful because they're so far up the rankings without trying so hard. They could easily catch up and take the lead if they wanted to.
This ties into how attractive confidence and self assurance atr to them. The level of effort it takes to surpass certain fitness thresholds necessarily has to at some point correctly signal vanity and neuroticism, which signal insecurity and self consciousness. So once again, its not that they aren't as a rule attracted to strong, muscly, fit men, but a smaller, less strong guy can still be perceived as more attractive if they still surpass a certain fitness threshold but scan as less insecure, as having a more attractive attitude about it.
