I am a tiny jQuery plugin that firstly aims to transform a standard <select> in a beautiful switchy element. Please have a look to what I am about at http://lou.github.com/switchy/
But wait! I can do a lot more if you play nice with me.
You put your standard <select> in your HTML with as many <option> as you want.
<select id="switch-me">
<option value="female">female</option>
<option value="male">male</option>
</select>
In your Javascript you can invoke the magic switchy method
$('#switch-me').switchy();