title: Adding SelectListItem manually to SelectList to use in DropDownListFor
body: <p>When I create a SelecList I wish to be able to add SelecListItem's manually and to do this I use this code:</p>
  
  <pre><code>List&lt;SelectListItem&gt; Provinces = new List&lt;SelectListItem&gt;();
  Provinces.Add(new SelectListItem() { Text = "Northern Cape", Value = "NC" });
  Provinces.Add(new SelectListItem() { Text = "Free State", Value = "FS" });
  Provinces.Add(new SelectListItem() { Text = "Western Cape", Value = "WC" });
  
  SelectList lstProvinces = new SelectList(Provinces);
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>Instead of this :</p>
  
  <pre><code>var lstProvinces = new SelectList(new[] { "Northern Cape", "Free State", "Western Cape" });
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>After I created the SelectList, I pass it to the DropDownListFor via the ViewBag :</p>
  
  <pre><code>Html.DropDownListFor(m =&gt; m.StartPointProvince, (SelectList)ViewBag.Provinces)
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>However when I create the SelectList using the first method, it doesn't work - It adds the 3 values to the dropdown list, but all the values display as:
  <img src="https://i.stack.imgur.com/fDjzm.jpg" alt="Code">
  *screenshot of output  </p>
  
  <p>However when I use the second method, it works fine.
  I wish to use the first method because i want to be able to specify the Text AND value of each item.</p>