Disclaimer: this comment may be affected by a higher-than-usual level of cognitive biases. Take it with a grain of salt.

There is a lot of truth to that, but isn't it also manipulation for women to wear make-up, high heels, fake breasts, painted hair, plastic surgery? Yet I seldom see the latter criticized. It is simply accepted, even encouraged.

See also this about how men in modern western societies generally spend much less effort than women on being attractive. To the extent that a world full of attractive people is better than a world full of unattractive people, that's essentially women cooperating and men defecting in a prisoner's dilemma. When one takes into account the fact that attractiveness in men doesn't depend just on appearance but also on behaviour, then the general idea behind PUA (but not necessarily any specific implementation of it) looks to me a lot like men starting to cooperate as well.