PETA gets Amanda Beard to take off her clothes *

PETA -- more naked women than a strip club. Olympic swimmer Amanda Beard is just the latest in a long line of famous women who don't let anything come between them and their compassion. Our own Francisco Vara-Orta has the details in LA Unleashed:

U.S. swimmer Amanda Beard wasn't going to let anything -- Chinese authorities, the Pacific Ocean or clothes -- get in the way of her making a statement against wearing fur.

On Wednesday, Beard, who will try to repeat her gold-medal 200-meter breaststroke feat of four years ago, unveiled a nude photograph of herself in a PETA campaign urging that women "Don't wear fur." She was just outside the athletes' village in China at the Olympic Games.

She had to move the conference from a nearby Beijing hotel after plainclothes police banned her scheduled news conference there "for our safety," authorities said...

For our safety? Dangerous curves ahead, I guess...

Meanwhile, Deceiver says all is not as it seems in Beard's  wear-no-leather stance.

--Veronique de Turenne

Photo: Jewel Samad / AFP

* Updated