Is the KFC logo a bowtie or the Colonel's body?

It's both — and the viral "it's actually his body!" claim is a bit of a false dichotomy.

Here's what's actually going on in the modern KFC logo:

• The face. The big element is Colonel Harland Sanders' face — glasses, white hair, goatee.
• The "bowtie" shape. Below the face, the design depicts his white double-breasted suit / body — the shape a lot of people's eyes read as just an abstract red-and-white striped bowtie.
• The actual bowtie. Within that, he is wearing his trademark black bowtie (in some eras, a black string/shoestring tie).

So the popular internet "mind-blown" take — "that's not a bowtie, it's the Colonel's whole body!" — is half right. The striped area people mistake for a standalone bowtie really represents his suited torso. But there's also a literal little black bowtie on him. It's not one or the other.

History note. The logo was modernized in 1997 (and refined in 2006 by Tesser) specifically to make the Colonel feel more like a friendly, full character rather than a flat emblem — which is why the "it's his body" reading exists at all.