Well then it's not normalize that's your problem but the way you map the UV's. Normalize in Maya fits your shell(s) inside the 0 -> 1 map space, with or without preserving the width/height ratio.
Do another planar map projection but this time go into the options (small box to the right) and check the "keep image width/height ratio" -checkbox.
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Polygons
Normalize
Do another planar map projection but this time go into the options (small box to the right) and check the "keep image width/height ratio" -checkbox.