Though not nearly as much as Merida and other revival princesses,Tiana is occasionally bashed for contributing to Disney's current trend of "meta", "woke" commentary with her whole "hard work, you can't just wish" shtick. While this does irritate me, I try to separate film makers' intentions from the actual context of the movie and the character.

In the first act of the film, she's portrayed as diligent and determined but she's not as in your face about it. For the most part, her thing is "partying and dancing just isn't my for me". She's not insistent, condescending or critical of others for their values. In fact, her friends and her mother are the ones being critical of her, and when her friends call her out for her workaholic nature, you can see in her reactions and facial expressions that it does bother her.

It's when she turns into a frog that a more arrogant and self-righteous Tiana emerges, but to be fair, these characteristics seem to stem from her reactions to Naveen's equally arrogant carefree ways. Perhaps the writers went too far in making them "foils" to each other, and thus both their personalities come off a bit too heavy handed. Naveen is just as mean and judgmental towards Tiana as she is to him, and let's be honest, Tiana has more right to be upset with him than the other way around.

That's why her dismissive attitude is understandable, as far as she was concerned, Naveen was someone who had just potentially ruined her whole life. At that time, in her eyes, this whole problem was all his fault, the only thing she truly did wrong was not clarifying that she wasn't really a princess and even that doesn't affect Naveen, his situation wasn't any worse off than it was before after they kissed, Tiana's was.

One princess who Tiana is surprisingly similar to in a few ways is Ariel, they both have relentless determination and they're both rather stubborn. Tiana is so stubborn that Naveen learns the errors of his ways much quicker than she does. It takes until her confrontation with Dr. Facilier near the end to realize what was truly important and the wise words of her mother and Mama Odie finally break through,

So it's not like the film is portraying her as in the right for working all the time and everyone else is in the wrong for criticizing her, (unlike Belle's situation with the townspeople) particularly, after the musical number Dig A Little Deeper where Tiana completely ignores the underlying message of the song and still insists on her hard work motto, Mama Odie and her animals are very much annoyed with her. We're certainly not meant to side with her in that context.

I think the reason why PATF doesn't infuriate me as much as Frozen is, while it does have that whole obnoxious "look, we're subverting Disney tropes" crap, it does embrace the trope it's criticizing. Throughout the film, Tiana is consistently given evidence both for and against wishes and by the end of the film, she does learn that there may be some truth to this concept.

Tiana's problem was that she only paid attention to HALF of her father's motto, (the hard work aspect) he never dismissed or belittled the idea of wishing and dreaming and while it isn't done in the most flawless way, Tiana does in time realize that. Is it really fair to call a character "anti-wishing" or "anti-fun" when a big part of her character arc is learning the value of those things?

That's the whole point of Ray and Evangeline, Tiana's starting to realize that maybe the restaurant isn't what's most important and she asks Evangeline, the evening star, for help, something she wouldn't do normally. When she lashes out at Ray it's because she's frustrated and again, she's been getting conflicting messages about the effectiveness of wishes. Later, she sees proof when Ray dies and is "united" with Evangeline, his wish was granted.

Yes, she was rude to Ray regarding Evangeline but she was only speaking out of hurt, Ray himself actually acknowledges that. And as for learning to have fun, that's the whole point of her relationship with Naveen. He teaches her to have more fun and she teaches him to take things more seriously. They balance each other out, and that's really the message, balancing hard work with concepts like wishing, love and fun, which is what everyone's telling Naveen and especially Tiana throughout the whole film.

Ultimately, I don't think PATF is as annoyingly and condescendingly subversive and "meta" as Brave and Frozen. Brave's "I don't need a prince" thing was exacerbated by making all her suitors pathetic morons while Frozen really takes a jab at "the love at sight" thing by making the charming prince the villain. PATF's subversion is more on par with Moana's, it's still slightly annoying but it doesn't really patronize and antagonize the trope and the concept, if anything Tiana is the one who's antagonized for being so critical of it.