"Single Ladies" has my colleagues dancing around the office, but Beyoncé's peculiar metal glove has been grinding my gears. Has this pop diva gone steampunk?

For something to be steampunk, it needs two things: gadgets and an old-school theme. Mechanical accessories will hypothetically provide their wearers with heightened strength, just like this giant steampunk arm. Does the glove mean Beyoncé is stronger now? The black-and-white aesthetic provides a vintage vibe reminiscent of cabaret and, in parts, burlesque. (You know those hips are a heartbeat away from a different kind of video.)

Not sure if Beyoncé is steampunk or not? We've got your tutorial video after the jump.

Beyoncé wears the glove throughout her music video but doesn't flaunt it heavily until the end, when she surprises us with a close-up camera shot and an intimate smile. With so much metal on her hand already, she might have to take the glove off if she wants someone to "put a ring on it." Oh wait, Beyoncé's already married!

Do you think Beyoncé went steampunk, or is this a weird coincidence?

Amongst bustle skirts and corsets, top hats and tails, brass-rimmed goggles and time-traveling arm bands, it was me, in a black tank top and jeans, that received the most stares in Brooklyn a few weeks ago. I was at the first day of the Dances of Vice festival, an evening that also served as my first taste of Steampunk, a wide-reaching subculture that lately has been, well, picking up steam. Yet people are still hard-pressed to define what is, on the surface, an embrace of the neo-Victorian, but deeper than that, a keenly felt reaction to the stark modernity that has come to homogenize a generation with iPods and Ikea.

Over the course of shooting two separate Steampunk events — Dances of Vice, which spanned both Brooklyn and Manhattan; and SalonCon, a two-day event held in Somerset, NJ — I was exposed to a mix of concerts, fashion shows and lectures. Vendors sold handmade corsets, jewelry made from clock gears and even wings. People's imaginations were on full display in their clothing and accoutrement. I expected to simply observe from a distance, but the more I learned, the more the Steampunk artists and their philosophy began to appeal to me. Musicians I knew and liked were mentioned, such as Tom Waits, Smashing Pumpkins, the Decemberists and even Sufjan Stevens; "Edward Scissorhands," "The Prestige" and "Wild Wild West" were a small handful of the "steamy" movies that I had seen.

I sat in on an interview with Voltaire — a regular on the Steampunk festival circuit — as he broke Steampunk music down into something that, while using classical instruments, can be anything, and is just sort of "old-time" and "anachronistic." I began to realize that between the costumery, the music and the movies, Steampunk is really about stepping away from our everyday lives and having a good time. And I can get behind that, even though I may not wear a corset anytime soon.

Not that I have a problem with playing dress-up: One look at the annals of VMA history will remind anyone that I have never been sartorially shy, and frankly the whole Victorian thing — the stovepipe hats, vests, long coats, pocket watches — is kind of cool, in the right time and place. No one really dresses up any more, so why not?

Well, here's why not: since moving from vegetarianism to veganism a few years ago, I wear no leather at all (I try to avoid wool, for the most part, as well), ever. If you know anything about the steampunk aesthetic, you know that could be problematic. Because besides the cutaways and cravats and cummerbunds, there is plenty of cow in steampunk land: leather straps, braces, leather trim on coats, leather boots, leather and metal accoutrements. Now, I realize that it's a period look, and that for the purposes of this piece I was doing a little bit of what amounted to acting. Still, I really didn't want to give in on the leather thing, and I didn't think they would be able to accommodate.

How wrong I was! Our stylist Karen contacted Thomas Willeford at Fallen Angel Fashions & Brute Force Leather (yikes) and, despite the company name, he was more than willing to create non-leather pieces. In fact, Thomas told Karen that the material was durable and easy to use, and that he liked working with it. Who would have thought? Cruelty-free steampunk!

He sent over a cool three-strap "arm shield" with what appeared to be a push-button teleporting device, and best of all, I thought, a pair of brass goggles with a mini Gatling gun on the side (I'm not into guns either, but trust me it's cool), plus a beautiful pocket watch and pin. (Check out Thomas's stuff at corsetshop.net.)

Add to that an eye-catching Albanian crest necklace from Rock Love and the clothes, including an awesome side-cutaway jacket (they call it an "aristocrat military drape shirt") from Retroscope and I was good to go, like a Jules Verne character come to life. All I needed was a hot air balloon or a George Melies rocket ship — or a part in the "Golden Compass" sequel. It was outfits like this that won the Smashing Pumpkins a VMA for "Tonight, Tonight."

With the right look all we needed was the right place — something properly retro and yet the sort of place from which a Victorian aristocrat might teleport himself from century to century. We got that and more with the Frick Collection — the gorgeous mansion-turned-museum on New York's Fifth Avenue that houses an impressive art collection amassed by the industrialist Henry Clay Frick. It turns out it also served as the inspiration for Stan Lee of Marvel Comics to create the "Avengers Mansion." So art fans, comic fans, steampunk fans — visit it next time you're in New York!