The accident that conferred Mae with her reptilian appendages also granted her strength beyond what her body chemistry should be able to produce naturally.  These heightened strength levels have not been tested, but Mae herself has shown little difficulty in breaking doors off their hinges, lifting her enemies easily, and even breaking her creations by hand (although she is not inclined to do so.)

But her strength is hardly the reason her villainy is feared and respected in Hub City.  Mae's primary means of attacking those who oppose her is the simple removal of her sunglasses and forcing a victim to meet her baleful gaze, which will turn them into solid stone.  Mae's petrifying power apparently allows some variance of her victim's final material-- as she has turned victims into unrefined grey rock, rose marble, alabaster, and pocked sandstone-- but whether this is Mae's choice or a quirk of fate is yet to be determined.  Nor has it been determined if Mae's gaze, reflected back from an object, such as a mirror, would be effective on herself.

What is known is that Mae's power is apparently not effective on inorganic material, as her power tends to leave the clothing and accessories of her victims unchanged. All the easier, in her mind, to remove them.
 

Mary Dumas always wanted to be the star, the center of attention.  From the first moments her father bought a camera, Mary wanted to be in every picture he took.  While she was a little self-involved and some might call her an attention-hog, Mary led an otherwise normal childhood, dreaming of being a model.  By junior high, she had taken to calling herself Mae, which was to be her 'model' name, shed decided, because it flowed better than Mary Dumas.  By junior high, it was becoming apparent that her wish wasn't a pipe dream.  She was stunning, even for someone so young, and was not only the object of every pubescent boy's desires, but the envy of most of the girls. 

With the mindset of an aspiring model firmly in place, Mae graduated junior high, and-- leaving her childhood friends behind-- attended Green Valley Modeling School, well outside of Hub City, in the upper class suburbs.  It was a splash of cold water for Mae, who entered school now having no friends.  The fact that she had blossomed into a vision of beauty did little to ingratiate her to the popular clique there, led by a teen who was by all rights the finest aspiring model Green Valley had to offer-- Amanda Davenport-- who did not like the new girl's looks being a threat to her.  The two quickly established both a rivalry and an outright hatred for one another that culminated just before the models at GVMS were slated for their first fashion show.

What is known is that Amanda did something to botch the night for Mae, but the details on exactly what get blurry.  Some stories suggest that Amanda put a snake in Mae's car that had been, unbeknownst to her, irradiated in some way, and when it bit her, its altered poison dramatically changed her body chemistry.  Mae firmly believes this, but other former students swear that the snake was only a garter snake, and was certainly not poisonous.  Whether that is true or they are covering for Amanda is anyone's guess.  More likely is a recent theory that Mae was already a latent superhuman, and that something-- perhaps Amanda replacing Mae's makeup with some that had a compound meant to harmlessly turn her face green when it came in contact with the hot lights of the stage-- reacted with her body chemistry and triggered a rapid genetic change in her. 

Whatever the case, Mae Dumas did not attend the Fashion Show, but a statue of one of the students that fell in Amanda's clique was found outside afterward, completely stripped of her clothing.  Scribbled onto the remains of her dress with lipstick were the words 'Never Forget'.  Two other aspiring models, also members of that same clique, disappeared before graduation and resurfaced likewise as naked statues, but Amanda herself was either never targeted-- or, at least, never attacked.  Only Mae knows why.

When her powers and fearsome snaky appendages first appeared, Mae began to hate beautiful and prissy women, choosing to petrify them in revenge for what they did to her, denuding their bodies to expose them completely, leaving them helpless and exposed, no longer glamour models but icons of smut.  Now, older and a lot more embittered, she has refined herself, choosing to think of herself as an artist.  But that hatred of beautiful women has also transplanted itself to the colorfully-dressed (and often, beautiful) heroines that defend Hub City, as they have taken the headlines and news-op photos that should have been hers.  While she is now a hardened criminal and has no qualms about petty robbery to fund herself and spiteful petrification of people, her crimes often occur specifically to draw heroines out where they can become her next masterpieces.