Drop down boxes

Hello,

I am having difficulty creating drop down boxes that render in a similar
fashion across browsers.  

I am using a series of dashes (-) as the second line in the drop down
box so that each box is the same size.  The difficulty I am experiencing
with this approach is that the Mac appears to be making the dashes twice the
size as the PC.  It seems that I can only cater to one platform or the
other.  If I reduce the number of dashes the boxes with not be the same
width on the PC because of the width of some of the content in the drop
downs.  The major limiting factor with this is the necessity to fit within
181 pixels (due to the design, and the size of the frameset we are working
with).

Perhaps there is a different character I should use for the spacer row?  Any
suggestions?  

As you can see we have tried an inline style sheet, but that isn't
completely solving this problem. 

Thanks,

Richard Taylor
marchFIRST
http://www.marchFIRST.com
415.369.6926




example:

<select name="bmm_author" size="1" style="font-size: 13px;">
	<option>select an author&#047;artist
	
<option>&#045;&#045;&#045;&#045;&#045;&#045;&#045;&#045;&#045;&#045;&#045;&#
045;&#045;&#045;&#045;&#045;&#045;&#045;&#045;&#045;&#045;&#045;&#045;&#045;
&#045;&#045;&#045;&#045;&#045;&#045;&#045;&#045;&#045;&#045;&#045;
	<option>Barney
	<option>Disney
	<option>Sesame Street
	<option>Raffi
	<option>Britany Spears
	<option>N Sync
	<option>Back Street Boys
	<option>Christina 
</select>

<select name="bmm_rating" size="1" style="font-size: 13px;">
	<option>select a movie rating
	
<option>&#045;&#045;&#045;&#045;&#045;&#045;&#045;&#045;&#045;&#045;&#045;&#
045;&#045;&#045;&#045;&#045;&#045;&#045;&#045;&#045;&#045;&#045;&#045;&#045;
&#045;&#045;&#045;&#045;&#045;&#045;&#045;&#045;&#045;&#045;&#045;
	<option>G-General Audiences
	<option>PG-Parental Guidance
	<option>NR-Not Rated
</select>