I want the perfect body. Many people have made statements such as this and died as a result, but who cares?

It is not unusual for people obsessed with body image to have eating disorders such as anorexia and suffer health problems that can lead to death or suicide. What is bizarre is there are Web sites that encourage young people to develop such eating disorders — with some citing death as an acceptable consequence.

Impressionable teenagers as young as 13 are going to Web sites with names such as Starving For Perfection, Dying To be Thin and Beautiful By Bones — and they are responding.

According to the National Eating Disorders Association, there are about 11 million Americans who suffer from eating disorders.

This issue is way more complicated than Web sites that encourage teens, but no one can deny that these sites have an alluring effect on teens who already struggle with media images of ultra-thin celebrities.

In 2001, the Minneapolis Star Tribune reported the death of Anna Westin of Chaska, Minn., who took her life because of problems with anorexia.

“We are all chameleons, our nature changing with the landscape … masking our true faces to fit in. Our disguises we use for protection,” Westin wrote in her journal in the spring of 1998.

“Saying goodbye to such an unfriendly place can’t be as hard as believing in it every day. And essentially, my spirit has fled already,” Westin also wrote in her journal Dec. 28, 1999.

On Feb. 16, 2001, after a night out with friends, she took a fatal dose of Tylenol and went to her bedroom to die.

In many cases, parents don’t have the tools to restrict information from their kids which might curb such harmful behavior. In fact, all the cards are stacked against parents who want to offer protection to their kids.

In 2001, Yahoo blocked access to pro-anorexia Web pages and chat rooms on its server, but that block has been lifted.

American Student List LLC sells a list of students and other personal information to commercial marketers so they can effectively target children — in some cases with marketing campaigns telling how certain products make them loose weight.

It is not surprising, therefore, that eating disorders are not a problem in developing countries, that don’t have aggressive marketing campaigns. Laws can be passed in the United States that protect young people, but this is a difficult issue for both Democrats and Republicans.

Republicans can’t be in favor of businesses and at the same time be for restricting their marketing campaigns. Democrats, on the other hand, can’t claim to be for free expression, and at the same time be for censoring Web sites that target young, impressionable people.

Time magazine, in its most recent issue, reported on a 19-year-old college student who started a pro-anorexia Web site. In March of last year, the girl, who they referred to as Lizzy, was admitted into a hospital because she had dropped to 88 pounds and her heart rate was 45 beats per minute.

Millions of young girls have said they want to be broomstick-thin, and some have said they are willing to die to achieve that goal — but no one cares.