Tolerated public nudity may never happen, but it should happen in places like beaches, natural parks and trails, along rivers and lakes, basically everywhere nature is prevalent. There's no point in wearing a bathing suit at the beach, on the bank of a river or a lake. There's no point to sweat under clothing when walking on a trail or resting in a park. To me normalizing nudity is making it legally possible in natural settings. If it can be made legal in public places, good! I'm fine being the only naked guy among clothed people. Clothed people are generally uncomfortable, not me. As many said on the thread, our naturist associations and federations need to push for it, making nudity an unremarkable event and drawing a clear line between sexual and non sexual nudity. As Anna said, the nude body is normal. Stopping hiding is helping stopping shaming. Naturism is a normal and accepted lifestyle behind closed doors and fences of naturist places, we need to tear down the barriers and make it normal everywhere, starting with natural environment and expanding eventually in public places. 

Good discussion and big thanks to everyone for joining in!

Many of us mentioned tolerance and acceptance.  I guess in our context they mean we want non-naturists to endorse that some people like to live nude and should be given the freedom to do so.  We also say the level of tolerance and acceptance changes over time.

I would say our level of tolerance and acceptance, or even our social norms themselves, is crafted by our living conditions.  Back at war times or in rural settings, both clothing and bathing were luxuries.  People could only occasionally jump into rare clean water available, and wash both their bodies and their only piece of garments carefully and separately.  When you were really filthy, hygiene was more important than modesty so being naked in front of other equally naked people would be totally practical and therefore normal.  In a place and time when clothing was known to be scarce, lack of which would not be considered improper.  Rural and even city kids skinnydipped because parents would rather spend their money on feeding them.  This remained the case even at turn of the century in many places.  20 years ago at a beach in a budding tourist town in China, local boys and men would come after school or work, dropped their shorts and jumped into the sea naked to swim or fish.  Many tourist kids were also in the same dress code.  Those who wore swimming trunks among the naked, in fact wore them to show off their wealth.  (Funny it may sound, it's the same mentality for those who wear pj's to go shopping at night in China... but that's for another thread.)

Today, clothing comes so very cheap with a huge supply.  Many people therefore pride themselves of being able to afford excessive amount of it.  At the same time, they jeer at those who do not have that luxury and project their own "higher standard" of modesty to elevate themselves, because they are no longer one of those to be jeered at.

It's not just on clothing or lack of, that people, myself included, would project their own "higher standards" onto others.  When we become more well off and resourceful, we become more self-rightous and less tolerating of any opposing views, because we can afford to.

So back to the topic of normalizing nudity, I consider nudity normalized if I could have my own little world where I could be left alone with those like-minded, and thrive as a community.  This is doable.  We just need to own a space to proceed.  The rule of the game is affordability.  As bad as it may sound, that means money.  Many operators of naturist venues can no longer afford to operate with raising prices and reducing patronage.  Naturists need to reverse that trend by investing in naturism, in both money and time - money from retirees and time from young folks and families.  The naturist future should not be solely about promoting nude recreation but also create living spaces where people who choose to live nude can do so.  There are already examples of these communities.  We just need to make more of them, and experiment until we found the right recipe to stablise and grow them.