“She's always been a very, very pretty girl, and now suddenly that she turned 18, everyone's like "OK, now she's fair game! Paparazzi!" It is kind of creepy。

My comments:

Fair game is originally a hunting term. Game refers to all the animals and birds hunters are after. “Fair” here points to the fact that it’s legal. Fair game hence represents animals that may be legally hunted for according to rules and regulations.

Now that she’s turned 18, she’s considered an adult. Therefore, the beautiful girl is now the target of everyone.

Yes, everyone, be they worthy of her or not, a gentleman, a scoundrel or scum of the earth.

Therefore, as you can read from the tone of the passage, it’s not such a good thing for a pretty young woman to be “fair game”.

On the surface and in theory, it appears to be great to be pretty and popular. In reality, it ain’t necessarily so.

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Go to Zhang Xin's column

本文僅代表作者本人觀點，與本網立場無關。歡迎大家討論學術問題，尊重他人，禁止人身攻擊和發布一切違反國家現行法律法規的內容。

About the author:

Zhang Xin（張欣） has been with China Daily since 1988, when he graduated from Beijing Foreign Studies University. Write him at: zhangxin@chinadaily.com.cn, or raise a question for potential use in a future column.